A paradigmatic model, the $\mathbb{Z}_2$ lattice gauge theory exhibits confinement mediated by the gauge field that binds pairs of particles into mesons, drawing connections to quantum chromodynamics. In the absence of any additional attractive interactions between particles, mesons are not known to bind in this model. Here, we show that resonant pair-production terms give rise to an additional repulsive binding mechanism that forms a stable ``hadron'' bound state of two mesons. A high-energy state, the hadron is stabilized by being off-resonantly coupled to a continuum. We study the dynamical formation of this bound state starting from local excitations. We use matrix product state techniques based on the time-evolving block decimation algorithm to perform our numerical simulations and analyze the effect of model parameters on hadron formation. Furthermore, we derive an effective model that explains its formation. Our findings are amenable to experimental observation on modern quantum hardware from superconducting qubits to trapped ions.

We discuss a one-quark state in the confinement phase near a reflective chromometallic boundary both at finite and zero temperature. Using numerical simulations of lattice Yang-Mills theory, we show that the test quark is confined to the neutral mirror by an attractive potential of the Cornell type, suggesting the existence of a mirror-bound one-quark state, a "quarkiton". Surprisingly, the tension of the string spanned between the quark and the mirror is lower than the fundamental string tension. The quarkiton state exhibits a partial confinement: while the quark is localized in the vicinity of the mirror, it can still travel freely along it. Such quarkiton states share similarity with the surface excitons in metals and semiconductors that are bound to their negatively charged images at a boundary. The quarkitons can exist at the hadronic side of the phase interfaces in QCD that arise, for example, in the thermodynamic equilibrium of vortical quark-gluon plasma.

I study the consequences of chiral symmetry restoration for the Dirac spectrum in finite-temperature gauge theories in the two-flavor chiral limit, using Ginsparg--Wilson fermions on the lattice. I prove that chiral symmetry is restored at the level of the susceptibilities of scalar and pseudoscalar bilinears if and only if all these susceptibilities do not diverge in the chiral limit $m\to 0$, with $m$ the common mass of the light fermions. This implies in turn that they are infinitely differentiable functions of $m^2$ at $m=0$, or $m$ times such a function, depending on whether they contain an even or odd number of isosinglet bilinears. Expressing scalar and pseudoscalar susceptibilities in terms of the Dirac spectrum, I use their finiteness in the symmetric phase to derive constraints on the spectrum, and discuss the resulting implications for the fate of the anomalous $\mathrm{U}(1)_A$ symmetry in the chiral limit. I also discuss the differentiability properties of spectral quantities with respect to $m^2$, and show from first principles that the topological properties of the theory in the chiral limit are characterized by an instanton gas-like behavior if $\mathrm{U}(1)_A$ remains effectively broken.

I discuss the consequences of the constraints imposed on the Dirac spectrum by the restoration of chiral symmetry in the chiral limit of gauge theories with two light fermion flavors, with particular attention to the fate of the anomalous $\mathrm{U}(1)_A$ symmetry. Under general, physically motivated assumptions on the spectral density and on the two-point eigenvalue correlation function, I show that effective $\mathrm{U}(1)_A$ breaking in the symmetric phase requires specific spectral features, including a spectral density effectively behaving as $m^2\delta(\lambda)$ in the chiral limit, a two-point function singular at zero, and delocalized near-zero modes, besides an instanton gas-like behavior of the topological charge distribution. I then discuss a $\mathrm{U}(1)_A$-breaking scenario characterized by a power-law divergent spectral peak tending to $O(m^4)/|\lambda|$ in the chiral limit and by a near-zero mobility edge, and argue that the mixing of the approximate zero modes associated with a dilute gas of topological objects provides a concrete physical mechanism producing the required spectral features, and so a viable mechanism for effective $\mathrm{U}(1)_A$ breaking in the symmetric phase of a gauge theory.

Aoki, Fukaya, and Taniguchi claim that both the spectral density of the Dirac operator at the origin and the topological susceptibility must vanish identically for sufficiently small but nonzero mass $m$ in the chirally symmetric phase of QCD with two light quark flavors, under certain technical assumptions on the spectrum and on the dependence of observables on $m$. Independently of these assumptions, I argue that a crucial step of their proof is not justified, and the validity of these conclusions should be reassessed.

Calculating the properties of baryon resonances from quantum chromodynamics requires evaluating the temporal correlations between hadronic operators using integrations over field configurations weighted by a phase associated with the action. By formulating quantum chromodynamics on a space-time lattice in imaginary time, such integrations can be carried out non-perturbatively using a Markov-chain Monte Carlo method with importance sampling. The energies of stationary states in the finite volume of the lattice can be extracted from the temporal correlations. A quantization condition involving the scattering $K$-matrix and a complicated ``box matrix'' also yields a finite-volume energy spectrum. By appropriately parametrizing the scattering $K$-matrix, the best-fit values of the $K$-matrix parameters are those that produce a finite-volume spectrum which most closely matches that obtained from the Monte Carlo computations. Results for the $\Delta$ resonance are presented, and a study of scattering for energies near the $\Lambda(1405)$ resonance is outlined, showing a two pole structure. The prospects for applying this methodology to the Roper resonance are discussed.

The profile of the pion valence quark distribution function (DF) remains controversial. Working from the concepts of QCD effective charges and generalised parton distributions, we show that since the pion elastic electromagnetic form factor is well approximated by a monopole, then, at large light-front momentum fraction, the pion valence quark DF is a convex function described by a large-$x$ power law that is practically consistent with expectations based on quantum chromodynamics.

We present a novel procedure for analyzing the lattice-QCD spectrum via the finite-volume formalism to obtain constraints on multi-hadron scattering amplitudes at both real and complex energies. This approach combines a Bayesian reconstruction of the scattering amplitude on the real axis with Nevanlinna interpolation for analytic continuation to complex-valued energies. The method is non-parametric, inherently accounting for parametrization dependence within the uncertainty. We demonstrate the applicability of this approach using both toy data and real lattice-QCD data in resonant systems from the HadSpec and BaSc collaborations.

We study confinement and deconfinement in dense two color QCD by analyzing the dynamics of thermal quarks and gluons. The Polyakov loop is used as a probe of the relevant thermal excitations, distinguishing quark and hadron dominated regimes in dense matter. To describe the Polyakov loop, we adopt both lattice informed phenomenological models and the massive Yang Mills framework. After calibrating these models at zero density, we investigate in medium modifications of the Polyakov loops and gluon propagators at finite temperature and density. Diquark gaps control the screening at zero temperature, whereas the screening due to thermal quarks is sensitive to the Polyakov loop. Inclusion of the Polyakov loop helps to reproduce lattice data at low temperature, suggesting that thermal excitations are predominantly hadronic rather than uncorrelated quarks.

We conduct a comprehensive study of the semileptonic decay process \(\Lambda \to p\,\ell\,\bar{\nu}_{\ell}\), focusing on the determination of all six vector and axial-vector form factors that govern the low-energy hadronic matrix elements of the underlying theory. These invariant form factors constitute the essential inputs for describing the decay, and their dependence on the momentum transfer \(q^{2}\) is analyzed across the entire physical kinematic region. To parameterize the \(q^{2}\)-dependence, we adopt both the \(z\)-expansion formalism and a polynomial fitting approach. Utilizing these parameterizations, we compute the exclusive decay widths for both the electron and muon channels and subsequently extract the corresponding branching ratios. Furthermore, we evaluate the ratio of decay widths between the muon and electron channels, defined as $R^{\mu e} \equiv \frac{\Gamma(\Lambda \to p\,\mu\,\bar{\nu}_{\mu})}{\Gamma(\Lambda \to p\,e\,\bar{\nu}_{e})}$, obtaining \(R^{\mu e} = 0.196^{+0.009}_{-0.012}\) from the polynomial fit and \(R^{\mu e} = 0.174^{+0.002}_{-0.005}\) from the \(z\)-expansion. While both ratios are compatible with previously reported values in the literature, the result from the \(z\)-expansion exhibits particularly strong agreement with the averages reported by the Particle Data Group (PDG).