Study of the theta dependence of the vacuum energy density in chiral effective Lagrangian models at zero temperature

Abstract

We perform a systematic study of the modifications to the QCD vacuum energy density $\epsilon_{vac}$ in the zero-temperature case ($T=0$) caused by a small, but non-zero, value of the parameter $\theta$, using different effective Lagrangian models which include the flavour-singlet meson field and implement the $U(1)$ axial anomaly of the fundamental theory. In particular, we derive the expressions for the topological susceptibility $\chi$ and for the second cumulant $c_4$ starting from the $\theta$ dependence of $\epsilon_{vac}(\theta)$ in the various models that we have considered. Moreover, we evaluate numerically our results, so as to compare them with each other, with the predictions of the Chiral Effective Lagrangian, and, finally, also with the available lattice data.