• Accepted Paper

Fractal phase structure of QCD under imaginary rotation

Rin Takada

Phys. Rev. D - Accepted 5 November, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/h94v-cvyn

Abstract

We show that in hot QCD rotating at an imaginary angular velocity Ω̃I, the angular velocity selects not only the temperature of the bulk but whether charge conjugation C is broken there. For QCD at temperature T and imaginary quark chemical potential θ, with Ω̃I/2π=p/q in lowest terms, the bulk far from the rotation axis is in the same thermal equilibrium state as nonrotating QCD at temperature T/q and imaginary quark chemical potential θ′=qθ+π(p+q+1); this follows from the Euclidean boundary conditions and locality alone, and holds nonperturbatively whenever the equivalent nonrotating system has a finite correlation length. Consequently, even at zero quark chemical potential, the bulk is placed at the Roberge-Weiss (RW) point whenever p and q are both odd, and C is spontaneously broken there for $T>qT_{\rm RW}$, with $T_{\rm RW}$ the RW endpoint temperature. The bulks at Ω̃I=2π/3 and 4π/3, for example, are both at temperature T/3, yet only the former can break C. The set of imaginary angular velocities at which C is broken has a fractal structure: raising T adds rationals of ever larger denominator. At irrational Ω̃I/2π the bulk corresponds to zero-temperature QCD at any T and remains confined.

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