We study the effect of a magnetic field on the pairing dynamics in two-flavor color superconducting dense quark matter. The study is performed in the weakly coupled regime of QCD at asymptotically high density, using the framework of the Schwinger-Dyson equation in the improved rainbow approximation. We show that the superconducting gap function develops a directional dependence in momentum space. Quasiparticles with momenta perpendicular to the direction of the magnetic field have the largest gaps, while quasiparticles with momenta parallel to the field have the smallest gaps. We argue that the directional dependence is a consequence of a long-range interaction in QCD. The quantitative measure of the ellipticity of the gap function is determined by a dimensionless ratio, proportional to the square of the magnetic field and inversely proportional to the fourth power of the quark chemical potential. For magnetic fields in stars, $B\lesssim 10^{18} G$, the corresponding ratio is estimated to be less than about $10^{-2}$, justifying the use of the weak magnetic field limit in all stellar applications.
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.
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 constants of the effective action describing the massless modes in the color-flavor-locking phase of QCD have been recently evaluated at high density. Values of the pseudoscalar masses for nonvanishing quark masses have also been given. The calculated values show however a puzzling feature: when $m_u=m_d=0$ and $m_s\not=0$ all the goldstones remain massless. We show that an additional invariant is present which avoids this feature. We costruct this invariant and discuss the emerging mass pattern for the pseudogoldstones. This provides for a complete scheme for the pseudogoldstone masses in…
We describe the low energy excitations of the diquark condensates in the color-flavor locked phase of QCD with three massless flavors, at high baryon densities, in terms of a non-linear effective lagrangian. Such a lagrangian is formally seen to correspond to the lagrangian for the hidden gauge symmetry description of the effective low energy chiral lagrangian, the role of the hidden symmetry being played by color. In particular, this agrees with the conjecture that the light degrees of freedom of the two phases are in correspondence to each other (complementarity). The discussion includes con…
We review how a classification into representations of color and flavor can be used to understand the possible patterns of symmetry breaking for color superconductivity in dense quark matter. In particular, we show how for three flavors, color-flavor locking is precisely analogous to the usual pattern of chiral symmetry breaking in the QCD vacuum.
We study the color-flavor locked phase of QCD with three massless quarks at high chemical potential and small non zero temperatures. We make use of the recently introduced effective action to describe such a phase. We obtain the exact order T^2 behaviour of the condensates and of the pressure by formally comparing the derivative from the QCD functional with symmetry breaking to that from the effective lagrangian with external sources, respecting the residual Z_2 invariance of the color-flavor locked phase. From these exact results, but now at a very tentative level of conjecture, we are lead t…
It is shown that spin polarization with respect to each flavor in three-flavor quark matter occurs instead of the color-flavor locking at high baryon density by using the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model with four-point tensor-type interaction. Also, it is indicated that the order of phase transition between the color-flavor locked phase and the spin polarized phase is the first order by means of the second order perturbation theory.
A new, gapless two-flavor color superconducting phase that appears under conditions of local charge neutrality and $β$-equilibrium is revealed. In this phase, the symmetry of the ground state is the same as in the conventional two-flavor color superconductor. In the low-energy spectrum of this phase, however, there are only two gapped fermionic quasiparticles, and the other four quasiparticles are gapless. The origin and the basic properties of the gapless two-flavor color superconductor are discussed. This phase is a natural candidate for quark matter in cores of compact stars.
We calculate the energy release associated with first-order phase transition between different types of single flavor color superconductivity in a magnetic field.
The structure of the phase diagram of strongly interacting matter at moderate densities is calculated within a 3-flavor NJL-type quark model with realistic quark masses. We focus on the influence of the selfconsistently determined effective strange quark mass on the color-flavor unlocking phase transition.
We consider the phase diagram of QCD at very high baryon density and at zero temperature in the presence of a strong magnetic field. The state of matter at such high densities and low temperatures is believed to be a phase known as the color-flavor locked phase which breaks color and electromagnetic gauge invariance leaving a linear combination of them unbroken. Of the 9 quarks (three flavors and three colors), five are neutral under this unbroken generator and four are oppositely charged. In the presence of a magnetic field corresponding to the unbroken generator however, the properties of th…
A dense neutrino medium can experience collective flavor oscillations through nonlinear neutrino-neutrino refraction. To make this multi-dimensional flavor transport problem more tractable, all existing studies have assumed certain symmetries (e.g., the spatial homogeneity and directional isotropy in the early universe) to reduce the dimensionality of the problem. In this work we show that, if both the directional and spatial symmetries are not enforced in the neutrino line model, collective oscillations can develop in the physical regimes where the symmetry-preserving oscillation modes are st…
A two-flavor color superconducting (2SC) Nambu--Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model is introduced at finite temperature T, chemical potential mu and in the presence of a constant magnetic field eB. The effect of (T,mu,eB) on the formation of chiral and color symmetry breaking condensates is studied. The complete phase portrait of the model in T-mu, mu-eB, and T-eB phase spaces for various fixed eB, T, and mu is explored. A threshold magnetic field eB_t~ 0.5 GeV^2 is found above which the dynamics of the system is solely dominated by the lowest Landau level (LLL) and the effects of T and mu are partly com…
The diquark condensate susceptibility in neutral color superconductor at moderate baryon density is calculated in the frame of two flavor Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model. When color chemical potential is introduced to keep charge neutrality, the diquark condensate susceptibility is negative in the directions without diquark condensate in color space, which may be regarded as a signal of the instability of the conventional ground state with only diquark condensate in the color 3 direction.
Considering cold, dense quark matter with two massless quark flavors, we demonstrate how, in a self-consistent calculation in the framework of QCD, the condensation of Cooper pairs induces a non-vanishing background color field. This background color field has precisely the right magnitude to cancel tadpole contributions and thus ensures overall color neutrality of the two-flavor color superconductor.
We consider the possible phases of a non-Abelian gauge theory, as a function of temperature and quark chemical potential, when both the number of colors and flavors is very large. Generally, a large number of flavors washes out deconfining phase transitions. We show, however, that the degeneracy of even the lightest baryons is exponentially large. This implies that the baryon number (or fluctuations thereof, at zero chemical potential) is an order parameter in the limit of an infinite number of colors and flavors.
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 phase diagram of strongly interacting matter at non-zero temperature and baryon chemical potential is calculated within a 3-flavor NJL-type quark model with realistic quark masses. The model exhibits spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking as well as diquark condensation in the two-flavor color-superconducting phase and in the color-flavor locked phase. We investigate the color-flavor unlocking phase transition, taking into account self-consistently calculated effective quark masses. We find that it is mainly triggered by a first order phase transition with respect to the strange quark mass. …
Chiral symmetry breaking (restoration) for SU(N) gauge theories is a topic of great interest and not yet fully explained. We consider the phenomenon as a collective spin effect and determine its behavior in terms of the number of flavors, N_f.
We construct the effective Lagrangian describing the light glueballs associated with the unbroken and confining SU(2) color subgroup for the 2 flavor superconductive phase of QCD. This Lagrangian constitutes a key ingredient for understanding the non perturbative physics of 2 flavor color superconductivity. We estimate the two photon decay process of the light glueballs using the saturation of the electromagnetic trace anomaly at the effective Lagrangian level. The present results are particularly relevant to our model of Gamma Ray Bursts based on color superconductivity in Quark Stars (R. Ouy…
We calculate the magnetic polarization tensor of the photon and of the gluons in a two flavor color superconductor with a LOFF pairing that consists of a single plane wave. We show that at zero temperature and within the range of the values of the displacement of the Fermi sea that favors the LOFF state, all the eigenvalues of the magnetic polarization tensor are positive. Therefore the chromomagnetic instabilities pertaining to a gapless color superconductor disappear.
The role of the strange quark mass for the phase structure of QCD at non-vanishing densities is studied by employing a recently developed self-consistent truncation scheme for the Dyson-Schwinger equations of the quark propagators in Landau gauge. Hereby the medium modification of the effective quark interaction by the polarization of gluons is implemented. Taking into account this effect results in significantly smaller dynamical quark masses at the Fermi surface. Due to this reduction the color-flavor locked phase is always the preferred color-superconducting phase at zero temperature and fo…
The phase diagram of a three-flavor Polyakov-loop Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model is analyzed for the case of isospin symmetric matter with color superconducting phases. The coexistence of chiral symmetry breaking and two-flavor color superconductivity (2SC phase) and a thermodynamic instability due to the implementation of a color neutrality constraint is observed. It is suggested to use a universal hadronization pressure to estimate the phase border between hadronic and quark-gluon plasma phases. Trajectories of constant entropy per baryon are analyzed for conditions appropriate for heavy-ion colli…
The masses of the pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone bosons in the color superconducting phase of dense QCD with two light flavors are estimated by making use of the Cornwall-Jackiw-Tomboulis effective action. Parametrically, the masses of the doublet and antidoublet bosons are suppressed by a power of the coupling constant as compared to the value of the superconducting gap. This is qualitatively different from the mass expression for the singlet pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson, resulting from non-perturbative effects. It is argued that the (anti-) doublet pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone bosons form colorless [with …
Enforcing color and electric charge neutrality conditions on the three-flavor color superconducting matter, I derive the explicit form of the quark propagators and the gluon self-energies for the gapless and the ordinary color-flavor-locked phases.
Finite lumps of color-flavor locked strange quark matter (CFL-strangelets) are significantly more stable than strangelets without color-flavor locking for wide ranges of parameters, increasing the likelihood of strangelet metastability, or even absolute stability beyond some minimum baryon number $A_{min}$. Whereas bulk CFL strange quark matter is electrically neutral, CFL-strangelets are positively charged, with $Z\approx 0.3 A^{2/3}$. This is quite different from ``ordinary'' strangelets and may provide a possible test of color-flavor locking if strangelets are detected in upcoming cosmic-ra…
We present a new computation in a field-theoretical model of Coulomb gauge QCD of the first radial and angular excitations of a qqq system in a SU(3) flavor singlet state, Lambda_S. The traditional motivation for the study is that the absence of flavor singlets in the lowest-lying spectrum is a direct consequence of the color degree of freedom. (The calculation is tested with decuplet baryons Delta(1232) and Omega(1672).) We also analyze decay branching fractions of the flavor singlet baryon for various masses with the simplest effective Lagrangians.
The color superconductivity under flavor asymmetric conditions relevant to the compact star phenomenology is studied within the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model. We focus on the effect of the deformation of the Fermi surfaces on the pairing properties and the energy budget of the superconducting state. We find that at finite flavor asymmetries the color superconducting BCS state is unstable towards spontaneous quadrupole deformation of the Fermi surfaces of the $d$ and $u$ quarks into ellipsoidal form. The ground state of the phase with deformed Fermi surfaces corresponds to a superposition of prolate…
We survey the non-locked color-flavor-spin channels for quark-quark (color superconducting) condensates in QCD, using an NJL model. We also study isotropic quark-antiquark (mesonic) condensates. We make mean-field estimates of the strength and sign of the self-interaction of each condensate, using four-fermion interaction vertices based on known QCD interactions. For the attractive quark pairing channels, we solve the mean-field gap equations to obtain the size of the gap as a function of quark density. We also calculate the dispersion relations for the quasiquarks, in order to see how fully g…
We study how vortices in dense superfluid hadronic matter can connect to vortices in superfluid quark matter, as in rotating neutron stars, focusing on the extent to which quark-hadron continuity can be maintained. As we show, a singly quantized vortex in three-flavor symmetric hadronic matter can connect smoothly to a singly quantized non-Abelian vortex in three-flavor symmetric quark matter in the color-flavor locked (CFL) phase, without the necessity for boojums appearing at the transition.
Baryonic matter at high density and low temperature is a color superconductor. In real world, this state of matter may naturally appear inside compact stars. A construction of a hybrid compact star with two flavor color superconducting quark matter in its interior is presented.
We propose a symmetry breaking scheme for QCD with three massless quarks at high baryon density wherein the color and flavor SU(3)_{color}xSU(3)_{L}xSU(3)_{R} symmetries are broken down to the diagonal subgroup SU(3)_{color+L+R} by the formation of a condensate of quark Cooper pairs. We discuss general properties that follow from this hypothesis, including the existence of gaps for quark and gluon excitations, the existence of Nambu-Goldstone bosons which are excitations of the diquark condensate, and the existence of a modified electromagnetic gauge interaction which is unbroken and which ass…
Common lore suggests that $N$-color QCD with massive quarks has no useful order parameters which can be non-trivial at zero baryon density. However, such order parameters do exist when there are $n_f$ quark flavors with a common mass and $d\equiv\gcd(n_f,N) > 1$. These theories have a $\mathbb Z_d$ color-flavor center symmetry arising from intertwined color center transformations and cyclic flavor permutations. The symmetry realization depends on the temperature, baryon chemical potential and value of $n_f/N$, with implications for conformal window studies and dense quark matter.
Lack of Lorentz invariance of QCD at finite quark chemical potential in general implies the need of Lorentz non-invariant condensates for the self-consistent description of the color-superconducting ground state. Moreover, the spontaneous breakdown of color SU(3) in this state naturally leads to the existence of SU(3) non-invariant non-superconducting expectation values. We illustrate these observations by analyzing the properties of an effective 2-flavor Nambu-Jona-Lasinio type Lagrangian and discuss the possibility of color-superconducting states with effectively gapless fermionic excitation…
The contribution of thermally excited electron-positron pairs to the bulk properties of the color-flavor locked quark phase inside compact stars is examined. The presence of these pairs causes the photon mean free path to be much smaller than a typical core radius ($R_0 \simeq 1$ km) for all temperatures above 25 keV so that the photon contribution to the thermal conductivity is much smaller than that of the Nambu-Goldstone bosons. We also find that the electrons and positrons dominate the electrical conductivity, while their contributions to the total thermal energy is negligible.
The simplest pattern of color superconductivity involves BCS pairing between up and down quarks. We argue that this ``2SC'' phase will not arise within a compact star. A macroscopic volume of quark matter must be electrically neutral and must be a color singlet. Satisfying these requirements imposes a significant free energy cost on the 2SC phase, but not on color-flavor locked (CFL) quark matter, in which up, down and strange quarks all pair. As a function of increasing density, therefore, one may see a single phase transition from hadronic matter directly to CFL quark matter. Alternatively, …
It is shown that extremely strong electric fields may be generated at the surface of strange quark matter in the color-flavor locked phase because of the surface effects. Some properties of strange stars made of this matter are briefly discussed.
Within Ginzburg-Landau theory, we study the structure of a magnetic vortex in color-flavor locked quark matter. This vortex is characterized by winding of the SU(3) phase in color-flavor space, as well as by the presence of a color-flavor unlocked condensate in the core. We estimate the upper and lower critical fields and the critical Ginzburg-Landau parameter that distinguishes between type I and type II superconductors.
The role of neutrality constraints for the phase structure of QCD at non-vanishing chemical potentials is studied within a self-consistent truncation scheme for the Dyson-Schwinger equation of the quark propagator in Landau gauge. We find the (approximate) color-flavor-locked phase to be energetically preferred at all potentially relevant densities and for physical values of the quark masses. We furthermore observe the impossibility to define this phase by residual global symmetries and discuss the role of chemical potentials.
We investigate the single flavor color superconductivity in a magnetic field. Because of the absence of the electromagnetic Meissner effect, forming a nonspherical CSC phase, polar, A or planar, does not cost energy of excluding magnetic flux. We found that these nonspherical phases do occupy a significant portion of the phase diagram with respect to magnetic field and temperature and may be implemented under the typical quark density and the magnetic field inside a compact star.
We investigate the effects of an external magnetic field in the gap structure of a color superconductor with three massless quark flavors. Using an effective theory with four-fermion interactions, inspired by one-gluon exchange, we show that the long-range component $\widetilde{B}$ of the external magnetic field that penetrates the color-flavor locked (CFL) phase modifies its gap structure, producing a new phase of lower symmetry. A main outcome of our study is that the $\widetilde{B}$ field tends to strengthen the gaps formed by $\widetilde{Q}$-charged and $\widetilde{Q}$-neutral quarks that …
The clustering of color sources provides a natural framework for soft partonic interactions producing strong color fields. We study the consequences of these color fields in the production of heavy flavor and the behavior of the nuclear modification factor.
The energy and momentum dependence of the gluon self-energy is investigated in a color superconductor with two flavors of massless quarks. The presence of a color-superconducting quark-quark condensate modifies the gluon self-energy for energies which are of the order of the gap parameter. For gluon energies much larger than the gap, the self-energy assumes the form given by the standard hard-dense loop approximation. It is shown that this modification of the gluon self-energy does not affect the magnitude of the gap to leading and subleading order in the weak-coupling limit.
QCD superconductors in the color-flavor-locked (CFL) phase sustain excitations (``Cooper'' mesons) that can be described as pairs of particles or holes around a gapped Fermi surface. In weak coupling and to leading logarithm accuracy the masses, decay constants and form factors of the scalar, pseudoscalar, vector and axial-vector excitations, which explicitly are of finite size, can be calculated exactly. Furthermore, the constraints of this microscopic calculation on the effective-lagrangian description and the computation of the generalized triangle anomaly are discussed.
The quark quasiparticle model is extended to study the properties of color-flavor locked strange quark matter at finite chemical potential and in a strong magnetic field. We present a self-consistent thermodynamic treatment by employing a chemical potential dependent bag function. It is found that the magnetized color-flavor-locked (MCFL) matter is more stable than other phases within a proper magnitude of magnetic field. The stability window is graphically shown for the MCFL matter compared with ordinate magnetized matter. The anisotropic structure of MCFL matter is dominated by the magnetic …
The notion that hadron masses scale according to the scaling of the quark condensate in hadronic matter, partly supported by a number of observations in finite nuclei, can be interpreted in terms of Harada-Yamawaki's ``vector manifestation" (VM) of chiral symmetry. In this scenario, near chiral restoration, the vector meson masses drop to zero {\it in the chiral limit} with vanishing widths. This scenario appears to differ from the standard linear sigma model scenario. We exploit a link between the VM and color-flavor locking inferred by us from lattice data on quark number susceptibility (QNS…
We study correlation functions of spatially separated static quark-antiquark pairs in (2+1)-flavor QCD in order to investigate onset and nature of color screening at high temperatures. We perform lattice calculations in a wide temperature range, $140 \le T \le 5814\,{\rm MeV}$, using the highly improved staggered quark action and several lattice spacings to control discretization effects. By comparing at high temperatures our lattice results to weak-coupling calculations as well as to the zero temperature result for the energy of a static quark-antiquark pair, we observe that color screening s…
In this paper we construct analytically a LOFF color superconducting state that is both color and charge neutral using the weak coupling approximation. We demonstrate that this state is free from chromomagnetic instabilities. Its relevance to the realistic quark matter at moderately high baryon density is discussed.
The effect of electric and color neutrality on 2-flavor color superconductivity has been investigated. It has been found that the effect of the charge neutrality on a 2-flavor quark system is very different from that on a 3-flavor system. The BCS diquark pair in 2-flavor color superconducting phase has been largely reduced by the large Fermi momentum of electron, the diquark condensate first increases with the increasing of quark's chemical potential $μ$,then decreases rapidly and finally disappears at about $μ=535MeV$, at which the thermodynamic potential equals to that in the neutral normal …
A schematic NJL-type model is employed to investigate kaon and pion condensation in deconfined quark matter in the color-flavor locked (CFL) phase, explicitly referring to quark degrees of freedom. To that end we allow for non-vanishing pseudoscalar diquark condensates in addition to the scalar ones which constitute the CFL phase. Color neutrality is ensured by the appropriate choice of color chemical potentials. The dependence of the free energy in the Goldstone condensed phases on quark masses and charge chemical potentials is found to be in good qualitative -- in most cases also quantitativ…
The properties of pseudoscalar bosonic excitations in the color-flavor locked phase at moderate densities are studied within a model of the Nambu--Jona-Lasinio type. Our previous analysis is extended to Goldstone bosons with hidden flavor and to higher-lying modes which stay massive in the chiral limit. The bosons are constructed explicitly by solving the Bethe-Salpeter equation for quark-quark scattering in random phase approximation. The masses and weak decay constants of the Goldstone bosons are found in good agreement with predictions from the low-energy effective theory. In the non-Goldst…
We demonstrate a holographic realization of color-flavor locking phase, using N=4 SU(Nc) SYM coupled to N=2 Nf fundamental hypermultiplets as an example. The gravity dual consists of Nc D3-branes and Nf D7-branes with world volume gauge field representing the baryon density. Treating a small number \tilde{N}c << Nc of D3-branes as Yang-Mills instantons on the D7-branes, we consider possible potential(s) on their moduli space or equivalently the Higgs branch. We show that a non-trivial potential can be generated by including the backreaction of the baryonic density on the D7-branes, this dynami…
A detailed analysis of collective modes that couple to either vector or axial color currents in color-flavor locked phase of color superconducting dense quark matter at finite temperature is presented. Among the realm of collective modes, including the plasmons and the Nambu-Goldstone bosons, we also reveal the gapless Carlson-Goldman modes, resembling the scalar Nambu-Golstone bosons. These latter exist only in a close vicinity of the critical line. Their presence does not eliminate the Meissner effect, proving that the system remains in the color broken phase. The finite temperature properti…
Electric and color neutral solutions, and the critical conditions for the formation of gapless color superconductors, are investigated in $K^0$ condensed color-flavor locked quark matter for nonzero strange quark mass. We show that as the strange quark mass increases, gapless modes for up-strange quark pairing occur first, followed by down-strange quark pairing. The behavior of the gaps, the dispersion relations, and the thermodynamic potential are all found as functions of the strange quark mass on the basis of a Nambu Jona-Lasinio type model. To a high degree of accuracy, they are presented …
In the presence of nonzero strange quark mass $m_s$, we investigate color neutrality in the $K^0$ condensed phase of color-flavor locked quark matter. By treating the $m_s$ effects on both kaon condensate and Fermi-surface phenomenon self-consistently, we develop a new treatment to evaluate color neutral solutions within the model-independent framework. It is pointed out that, in the general sense, the expectation values of gluon fields obtained from dynamics of Goldstone bosons solely are not identified with the factual color chemical potentials.
We derive the effective Lagrangian for the low-energy massive meson excitations of the color-flavor-locking (CFL) phase of QCD with 3 flavors of light quarks. We compute the decay constants, the maximum velocities, and the masses of the mesons at large baryon chemical potential mu. The decay constants are linear in mu. The meson maximum velocities are close to that of sound. The meson masses in the CFL phase are significantly smaller than in the normal QCD vacuum and depend only on bare quark masses. The order of the meson masses is, to some extent, reversed compared to that in the QCD vacuum.…
