Multifarious Roles of Hidden Chiral-Scale Symmetry: “Quenching” gA in Nuclei

Abstract

I discuss how the axial current coupling constant gA renormalized in scale symmetric chiral EFT defined at a chiral matching scale impacts on the axial current matrix elements on beta decays in nuclei with and without neutrinos. The “quenched” gA observed in nuclear superallowed Gamow–Teller transitions, a long-standing puzzle in nuclear physics, is shown to encode the emergence of chiral-scale symmetry hidden in QCD in the vacuum. This enables one to explore how trace-anomaly-induced scale symmetry breaking enters in the renormalized gA in nuclei applicable to certain non-unique forbidden processes involved in neutrinoless double beta decays. A parallel is made between the roles of chiral-scale symmetry in quenching gA in highly dense medium and in hadron–quark continuity in the EoS of dense matter in massive compact stars. A systematic chiral-scale EFT, presently lacking in nuclear theory and potentially crucial for the future progress, is suggested as a challenge in the field.