We study the properties of QCD at high baryon density in a finite volume where color superconductivity occurs. We derive exact sum rules for complex eigenvalues of the Dirac operator at finite chemical potential, and show that the Dirac spectrum is directly related to the color superconducting gap $Δ$. Also, we find a characteristic signature of color superconductivity: an X-shaped spectrum of partition function zeros in the complex quark mass plane near the origin, reflecting the $Z(2)_{L} \times Z(2)_{R}$ symmetry of the diquark pairing. Our results are universal in the domain $Δ^{-1} \ll L \ll m_π^{-1}$ where $L$ is the linear size of the system and $m_π$ is the pion mass at high density.
We investigate quantum chromodynamics with two colors at nonvanishing density using Dyson-Schwinger equations. Lattice methods do not have a complex action problem in this theory. Thus, we can benchmark our results and the effect of truncations directly by comparing with the corresponding lattice results. We do so for the gluon propagator, the chiral condensate, and the quark number density and test variations of the employed truncation to improve the agreement. Finally, we compare the effect of a truncation on the chiral and confinement/deconfinement transitions in the phase diagrams of QCD a…
A Coulomb gas representation of dense-matter QCD is derived from a dual transformation of the low-energy effective Lagrangian. The point-like charges Q=+1,-1 of the gas are identified with the instantons and anti-instantons of such topological charges. An instanton repels another instanton with the same force as it attracts an anti-instanton, in contrast to the semiclassical interaction.
Centre sector transitions in QCD-like theories with dynamical quark matter are investigated. In the hadronic phase, these transitions still take place in the infinite volume at zero temperature limit despite of the explicit breaking of the centre symmetry by the matter fields. This finding is supported by simulations of the SU(2) Yang-Mills theory with Higgs matter. The phenomenological impact of the centre sector transitions for dense but confined matter is explained: centre dressed quarks acquire Bose statistics and form a so-called Fermi-Einstein condensate. This mechanism is further illust…
QCD at finite densities of heavy quarks is investigated using the density-of-states method. The phase factor expectation value of the quark determinant is calculated to unprecedented precision as a function of the chemical potential. Results are validated using those from a reweighting approach where the latter can produce a significant signal-to-noise ratio. We confirm the particle-hole symmetry at low temperatures, find a strong sign problem at intermediate values of the chemical potential, and an inverse Silver Blaze feature for chemical potentials close to the onset value: here, the phase …
We analytically study two-color QCD with an even number of flavors at high baryon density. This theory is free from the fermion sign problem. Chiral symmetry is broken spontaneously by the diquark condensate. Based on the symmetry breaking pattern we construct the low-energy effective Lagrangian for the Nambu-Goldstone bosons. We identify a new epsilon-regime at high baryon density in which the quark mass dependence of the partition function can be determined exactly. We also derive Leutwyler-Smilga-type spectral sum rules for the complex eigenvalues of the Dirac operator in terms of the fermi…
The isospin chemical potential region is known as the sign-problem free region of quantum chromodynamics (QCD). In this paper, we introduce the isospin chemical potential to the three-dimensional three-state Potts model to mimic the dense QCD; e.g., the QCD effective model with heavy quarks at finite density. We call it as QCD-like Potts model. The QCD-like Potts model does not have the sign problem, but we can expect that it shares some properties with QCD. Since we can obtain the non-approximated Potts spin configuration at finite isospin chemical potential where the simple Metropolis algori…
We will review our understanding of non-abelian gauge theories in finite physical volumes. It allows one in a reliable way to trace some of the non-perturbative dynamics. The role of gauge fixing ambiguities related to large field fluctuations is an important lesson that can be learned. The hamiltonian formalism is the main tool, partly because semiclassical techniques are simply inadequate once the coupling becomes strong. Using periodic boundary conditions, continuum results can be compared to those on the lattice. Results in a spherical finite volume will be discussed as well.
Euclidean dense matter generically suffers from the fermion sign problem. However, we argue that the sign problem is absent if one considers only low-energy degrees of freedom. Specifically, the low energy effective theory of dense QCD has positive Euclidean path integral measure, which allows one to establish rigorous inequalities showing that the color-flavor locked (CFL) phase is the true vacuum of three flavor, massless QCD. We then describe a method for simulating dense QCD on the lattice. We also discuss applications to electronic systems in condensed matter, such as generalized Hubbard …
The response function of a homogeneous and dense hadronic system to a time-dependent (baryon) vector potential is discussed for holographic dense QCD (D4/D8 embedding) both in the confined and deconfined phases. Confined holographic QCD is an uncompressible and static baryonic insulator at large N_c and large λ, with a gapped vector spectrum and a massless pion. Deconfined holographic QCD is a diffusive conductor with restored chiral symmetry and a gapped transverse baryonic current. Similarly, dense D3/D7 is diffusive for any non-zero temperature at large N_c and large λ. At zero temperature …
Solving the properties of dense QCD matter is an extremely challenging problem because standard theoretical tools do not work at intermediate densities. The gauge/gravity duality may help to provide answers in this region. I give a brief review of recent progress in this field, focusing on the V-QCD model, which is one of the most sophisticated holographic models of QCD. I discuss predictions for the phase diagram, the equation of state, and properties of baryons. I apply these results to analyze the properties of neutron stars and to quark matter production in neutron star mergers.
We conjecture that the confinement- deconfinement phase transition in QCD at large number of colors N and N_f\ll N at T\neq 0 and μ\neq 0 is triggered by the drastic change in θbehavior. The conjecture is motivated by the holographic model of QCD where confinement -deconfinement phase transition indeed happens precisely at the value of temperature T=T_c where θdependence experiences a sudden change in behavior[1]. The conjecture is also supported by quantum field theory arguments when the instanton calculations (which trigger the θdependence) are under complete theoretical control for T>T_c, s…
We use chiral perturbation theory to study the extraction of pion electromagnetic polarizabilities from lattice QCD. Chiral extrapolation formulae are derived for partially quenched QCD, and quenched QCD simulations. On a torus, volume dependence of electromagnetic observables is complicated by SO(4) breaking, as well as photon zero-mode interactions. We determine finite volume corrections to the Compton scattering tensor of pions. We argue, however, that such results cannot be used to ascertain volume corrections to polarizabilities determined in lattice QCD with background field methods. Con…
Different types of non-Abelian vortex-strings appear in dense or hot QCD, both of which possess non-Abelian internal orientation zero modes. We calculate the interaction between them and find the universal repulsion for dense QCD (color superconductivity) and the dependence on the orientations for hot QCD (chirally broken phase). This is a review article based on our papers arXiv:0708.4092 and arXiv:0708.4096.
We study the properties of an instanton ensemble in three-flavor dense QCD which can be regarded as an instanton plasma weakly interacting by exchanging the eta' mesons. Based on this description, we explore the chiral phase transition induced by the instanton ensemble at high baryon density in analogy with the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition. Using the renormalization group approach, we show that the instanton ensemble always behaves as a screened and unpaired plasma. We also demonstrate that the chiral condensate in dense QCD is proportional to the instanton density.
We study the nuclear symmetry energy of dense matter using holographic QCD. To this end, we consider two flavor branes with equal quark masses in a D4/D6/D6 model. We find that at all densities the symmetry energy monotonically increases. At small densities, it exhibits a power law behavior with the density, $E_{\rm sym} \sim ρ^{1/2}$.
In this letter, we investigate the anomalous Hall effect in dense QCD matter. When the dual chiral density wave which is the spatially modulated chiral condensate appears in the medium, it gives rise to two Weyl points to the single-particle energy-spectrum and then the anomalous Hall conductivity becomes nonzero. Then, dense QCD matter is analogous to the Weyl semimetal. The direct calculation of the Hall conductivity by way of Kubo's linear response theory gives the term proportional to the distance between the Weyl points. Unlike the Weyl semimetal, there appears the additional contribution…
Non-Abelian strings exist in the color-flavor locked phase of dense QCD. We show that kinks appearing in the world-sheet theory on these strings, in the form of the kink-antikink bound pairs, are the magnetic monopoles --- descendants of the 't Hooft-Polyakov monopoles surviving in such a special form in dense QCD. Our consideration is heavily based on analogies and inspiration coming from certain supersymmetric non-Abelian theories. This is the first ever analytic demonstration that objects unambiguously identifiable as the magnetic monopoles are "native" to non-Abelian Yang-Mills theories (a…
The effective potential of composite diquark fields responsible for color symmetry breaking in cold very dense QCD, in which long-range interactions dominate, is derived. The spectrum of excitations and the universality class of this dynamics are described.
We compute quark and gluon propagators in 2-colour QCD at large baryon chemical potential mu. The gluon propagator is found to be antiscreened at intermediate mu and screened at large mu. The quark propagator is drastically modified in the superfluid region as a result of the formation of a superfluid gap.
We review the proposal to resum the physics of hard thermal loops in the thermodynamics of the quark-gluon plasma through nonperturbative expressions for entropy and density obtained from a Phi-derivable two-loop approximation. A comparison with the recently solved large-N_f limit of hot QCD is performed, and some updates, in particular on quark number susceptibilities, are made.
Transitions between centre sectors are related to confinement in pure Yang-Mills theories. We study the impact of these transitions in QCD-like theories for which centre symmetry is explicitly broken by the presence of matter. For low temperatures, we provide numerical evidence that centre transitions do occur with matter merely providing a bias towards the trivial centre sector until centre symmetry is spontaneously broken at high temperatures. The phenomenological consequences of these transitions for dense hadron matter are illustrated in an SU(3) effective quark theory: centre dressed quar…
This talk summarizes some of the theoretical issues currently most debated in the field of hot and dense QCD matter and ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions.
We study the scaling behavior of the two-flavor chiral phase transition using an effective quark-meson model. We investigate the transition between infinite-volume and finite-volume scaling behavior when the system is placed in a finite box. We can estimate effects that the finite volume and the explicit symmetry breaking by the current quark masses have on the scaling behavior which is observed in full QCD lattice simulations. The model allows us to explore large quark masses as well as the chiral limit in a wide range of volumes, and extract information about the scaling regimes.In particula…
We study the Bethe-Salpeter equations for spin zero diquark composites in the color superconducting phase of N_f=2 cold dense QCD. The explicit form of the spectrum of the diquarks, containing an infinite tower of narrow (at high density) resonances, is derived. It is argued that there are five pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone bosons (pseudoscalars) that remain almost massless at large chemical potential. These five pseudoscalars, along with the massless quarks of the third color should play an important role in the infrared dynamics of N_f=2 dense QCD.
The infamous sign problem makes it impossible to probe dense (baryon density $μ_B>0$) QCD at temperatures near or below the deconfinement threshold. As a workaround, one can explore QCD-like theories such as two-colour QCD (QC2D) which don't suffer from this sign problem but are qualitively similar to real QCD. Previous studies on smaller lattice volumes have investigated deconfinement and colour superfluid to normal matter transitions. In this study we look at a larger lattice volume $N_s=24$ in an attempt to disentangle finite volume and finite temperature effects. We also fit to a larger nu…
The superconductivity in cold dense QCD with three massless flavors is analyzed in the framework of the Schwinger-Dyson equation. The set of two coupled gap equations for the color antitriplet, flavor antitriplet (bar{3},bar{3}) and the color sextet, flavor sextet (6,6) order parameters is derived. It is shown that the antitriplet-antitriplet gives the dominant contribution to the color-flavor locked order parameter, while the sextet-sextet is small but nonzero.
We study the color-dependent confining forces between two quarks by the quenched lattice simulations of Coulomb gauge QCD. The color-singlet and color-antitriplet instantaneous potentials yield attractive forces. The ratio of the string tensions obtained from them is approximately 2 and have little volume dependence. Meanwhile, the color-octet and color-sextet channels give a minor contribution for two-quark system. We finally find that the infrared self-energy of the color-nonsinglet channels diverges in the infinite volume limit; however, the degree of the divergence on the finite lattice ca…
We investigate cold dense matter in the context of Sakai and Sugimoto's holographic model of QCD in the Wigner-Seitz approximation. In bulk, baryons are treated as instantons on S^3\times R^1 in each Wigner-Seitz cell. In holographic QCD, Skyrmions are instanton holonomies along the conformal direction. The high density phase is identified with a crystal of holographic Skyrmions with restored chiral symmetry at about 4 Mkk^3/pi^5. As the average density goes up, it approaches to uniform distribution while the chiral condensate approaches to p-wave over a cell. The chiral symmetry is effectivel…
The chiral phase transition in QCD at finite chemical potential and temperature can be characterized for small chemical potential by its curvature and the transition temperature. The curvature is accessible to QCD lattice simulations, which are always performed at finite pion masses and in finite simulation volumes. We investigate the effect of a finite volume on the curvature of the chiral phase transition line. We use functional renormalization group methods with a two flavor quark-meson model to obtain the effective action in a finite volume, including both quark and meson fluctuation effec…
Using Monte Carlo simulations and extended mean field theory calculations we show that the $3$-dimensional $Z_3$ spin model with complex external fields has non-monotonic spatial correlators in some regions of its parameter space. This model serves as a proxy for heavy-dense QCD in $(3+1)$ dimensions. Non-monotonic spatial correlators are intrinsically related to a complex mass spectrum and a liquid-like (or crystalline) behavior. A liquid phase could have implications for heavy-ion experiments, where it could leave detectable signals in the spatial correlations of baryons.
Finite-volume effects in Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) have been a subject of much theoretical interest for more than two decades. They are in particular important for the analysis and interpretation of QCD simulations on a finite, discrete space-time lattice. Most of these effects are closely related to the phenomenon of spontaneous breaking of the chiral flavor symmetry and the emergence of pions as light Goldstone bosons. These long-range fluctuations are strongly affected by putting the system into a finite box, and an analysis with different methods can be organized according to the interp…
A short review of the two recently analyzed collective effects in dense non-Abelian matter, the photon and dilepton production in nonequilibrium glasma and polarization properties of turbulent Abelian and non-Abelian plasmas, is given.
The Bethe-Salpeter equations for diquarks with the quantum numbers of the Nambu-Goldstone bosons are analyzed in the color-flavor locked phase of cold dense QCD with three quark flavors. The decay constants and the velocities of the Nambu-Goldstone bosons are calculated in the Pagels-Stokar approximation. It is also shown that, in contrast to the case of dense QCD with two flavors, there are no massive radial excitations with quantum numbers of the Nambu-Goldstone bosons in the color-flavor locked phase. The role of the Meissner effect in the pairing dynamics of diquarks is explained.
The properties of matter at finite baryon densities play an important role for the astrophysics of compact stars as well as for heavy ion collisions or the description of nuclear matter. Because of the sign problem of the quark determinant, lattice QCD cannot be simulated by standard Monte Carlo at finite baryon densities. I review alternative attempts to treat dense QCD with an effective lattice theory derived by analytic strong coupling and hopping expansions, which close to the continuum is valid for heavy quarks only, but shows all qualitative features of nuclear physics emerging from QCD.…
The curvature which characterizes the QCD phase transition at finite temperature and small values of the chemical potential is accessible to lattice simulations. The results for this quantity which have been obtained by several different lattice simulation methods differ due to different numbers of flavors, different pion masses and different sizes of the simulation volume. In order to reconcile these results, it is important to investigate finite-volume effects on the curvature. We investigate the curvature of the chiral phase transition line at finite temperature and chemical potential in a …
We study the heavy quark mass dependence of selected observables constructed from heavy-light meson correlation functions in small-volume two-flavour lattice QCD after taking the continuum limit. The light quark mass is tuned to zero, whereas the range of available heavy quark masses $m_h$ covers a region extending from around the charm to beyond the bottom quark mass scale. This allows entering the asymptotic mass-scaling regime as $1/m_h \to 0$ and performing well-controlled extrapolations to the infinite-mass limit. Our results are then compared to predictions obtained in the static limit o…
Combining strong coupling and hopping expansion one can derive a dimensionally reduced effective theory of lattice QCD. This theory has a reduced sign problem, is amenable to analytic evaluation and was successfully used to study the cold and dense regime of QCD for sufficiently heavy quarks. We show results from the evaluation of the effective theory for arbitrary $N_c$ up to $κ^4$. The inclusion of gauge corrections is also investigated. We find that the onset transition to finite baryon number density steepens with growing $N_c$ even for $T \neq 0$. This suggests that in the large $N_c$ lim…
We present a calculation of the meson masses, decay constants and quark-antiquark vacuum expectation value for the three generic QCD-like chiral symmetry breaking patterns $SU(N_F)\times SU(N_F)\to SU(N_F)_V$, $SU(N_F)\to SO(N_F)$ and $SU(2N_F)\to Sp(2 N_F)$ in the effective field theory for these cases. We extend the previous two-loop work to include effects of partial quenching and finite volume. The calculation has been performed using the quark flow technique. We reproduce the known infinite volume results in the unquenched case. The analytical results can be found in the supplementary mat…
We present one-loop results for the forward twist-two matrix elements relevant to the unpolarised, helicity and transversity baryon structure functions, in partially-quenched (N_f=2 and N_f=2+1) heavy baryon chiral perturbation theory. The full-QCD limit can be straightforwardly obtained from these results and we also consider SU(2|2) quenched QCD. Our calculations are performed in finite volume as well as in infinite volume. We discuss features of lattice simulations and investigate finite volume effects in detail. We find that volume effects are not negligible, typically around 5--10% in cur…
The Bethe-Salpeter equations for spin zero diquark composites in the color superconducting phase of $N_f=2$ and $N_f=3$ cold dense QCD are studied. The explicit form of the spectrum of the diquarks with the quantum numbers of the (pseudo-) Nambu-Goldstone bosons is derived.
We review an effective field theory for the non-Fermi liquid regime of dense QCD matter. Non-Fermi liquid effects arise due the presence of unscreened magnetic gluon exchanges. We show that there is a systematic low energy expansion in fractional powers and logarithms of energy. We discuss the validity of some standard theorems of Fermi liquid theory.
We discuss the extraction of the electromagnetic and spin polarisabilities of nucleons from lattice QCD. We show that the external field method can be used to measure all the electromagnetic and spin polarisabilities including those of charged particles. We then turn to the extrapolations required to connect such calculations to experiment in the context of finite volume chiral perturbation theory. We derive results relevant for lattice simulations of QCD, partially-quenched QCD and quenched QCD. Our results for the polarisabilities show a strong dependence on the lattice volume and quark mass…
We investigate the interplay between the chiral and diquark condensates on the basis of the Ginzburg-Landau potential with QCD symmetry. We demonstrate that the axial anomaly drives a new critical point at low temperature in the QCD phase diagram and leads to a smooth crossover between the hadronic and color superconducting phases.
QCD superconductors in the color-flavor-locked (CFL) phase support light excitations (generalized pions) in the form of particle-particle or hole-hole excitations. We analyze the generalized process $\tildeπ^0\to\tildeγ\tildeγ$ in the weak coupling limit and show that it is related to the recently suggested Wess-Zumino-Witten (WZW) term. In dense QCD, the radiative decay of the generalized pion is constrained by geometry and vanishes at large density.
Quark matter at high density may exhibit color superconductivity. As magnetic flux tubes in metallic superconductors, color magnetic flux tubes as non-Abelian vortices appear in the color-flavor locked phase of high density QCD. ${\mathbb C}P^2$ Nambu-Goldstone bosons and Majorana fermions belonging to the triplet representation are known to be localized around a non-Abelian vortex. In this paper, we determine the coupling of these bosonic and fermionic modes by using the nonlinear realization method.
Dense QCD at zero temperature with a large number of colors is a crystal. We show that in the holographic dual description, the crystal is made out of pairs of dyons with $e=g=\pm 1$ charges in a salt-like arrangement. We argue that with increasing density the dyon masses and topological charges equalize, turning the salt-like configuration to a bcc of half-instantons. The latter is dual to a cubic crystal of half-skyrmions. We estimate the transition from an fcc crystal of instantons to a bcc crystal of dyons to about 3 times nuclear matter density with a dyon binding energy of about 180 MeV.
The transport properties of dense QCD matter play a crucial role in the physics of neutron stars and their mergers, but are notoriously difficult to study with traditional quantum field theory tools. Specializing to the case of unpaired quark matter in beta equilibrium, we approach the problem through the machinery of holography, in particular the V-QCD and D3-D7 models, and derive results for the electrical and thermal conductivities and the shear and bulk viscosities. In addition we compare the bulk to shear viscosity ratio to the speed of sound and find that it violates the so-called Buchel…
We investigate the effect of a finite volume on the critical behavior of the theory of the strong interaction (QCD) by means of a quark-meson model for two quark flavors. In particular, we analyze the effect of a finite volume on the location of the critical point in the phase diagram existing in our model. In our analysis, we take into account the effect of long-range fluctuations with the aid of renormalization group techniques. We find that these quantum and thermal fluctuations, absent in mean-field studies, play an import role for the dynamics in a finite volume. We show that the critical…
We provide a method to study hadronic matter at finite density in the context of the Sakai-Sugimoto model. We introduce the baryon chemical potential through the external $U(1)_v$ in the induced (DBI plus CS) action on the D8-probe-brane, where baryons are skyrmions. Vector dominance is manifest at finite density. We derive the baryon density effect on the energy density, the dispersion relations of pion and vector mesons at large $N_c$. The energy density asymptotes to a constant at large density suggesting that dense matter at large $N_c$ freezes, with the pion velocity dropping to zero. Hol…
As recently shown, the ground state of dense QCD matter in a strong magnetic field is an inhomogeneous condensate of neutral pions which was named Chiral Soliton Lattice (CSL) phase in analogy with a state present for chiral magnets. We continue this work by showing that similar phase is present for a class of QCD-like theories which are accessible to standard lattice Monte-Carlo simulations unlike the QCD itself which suffers from the notorious sign problem if non-zero baryon chemical potential is considered. On the occasion of the Gravitation session of the Moriond conference we also briefly…
