An Infrared Renormalization Group Limit Cycle in QCD

Abstract

Small increases in the up and down quark masses of QCD would tune the theory to the critical renormalization group trajectory for an infrared limit cycle in the three-nucleon system. At critical values of the quark masses, the deuteron binding energy goes to zero and the triton has infinitely many excited states with an accumulation point at the 3-nucleon threshold. The ratio of the binding energies of successive states approaches a universal constant that is close to 515. The proximity of physical QCD to the critical trajectory for this limit cycle explains the success of an effective field theory of nucleons with contact interactions only in describing the low-energy 3-nucleon system.