Probing the Source of Proton Mass by"Unbreaking" Scale-Chiral Symmetry

Abstract

I describe a possible scenario for the origin of proton mass in terms of Cheshire Cat, half-skyrmions, topology change and interplay between hidden chiral-scale symmetry and induced local symmetry. This differs from the standard constituent-quark scenario. As the baryonic matter density is increased toward the vector manifestation (VM) fixed-point at which the $\rho$ mass is to vanish, the effective in-medium mass ratio $m^*_\rho/m^*_N$ is to tend to zero proportionally to $g^*_\rho$ where $g^*_\rho$ is the in-medium hidden gauge coupling constant. I develop the thesis that the intricacy involved in the mass generation could be decoded from experiments at RIB accelerators and massive compact stars.