An Infrared Renormalization Group Limit Cycle in QCD

We use effective field theory to show that small increases in the up and down quark masses would move QCD very close to the critical renormalization group trajectory for an infrared limit cycle in the three-nucleon system. We conjecture that QCD can be tuned to the critical trajectory by adjusting the quark masses independently. At the critical values of the quark masses, the binding energies of the deuteron and its spin-singlet partner would be zero and the triton would have infinitely many excited states. The ratio of the binding energies of successive states would approach a universal constant that is close to 515