It was predicted qualitatively in ref.[1] that skyrmion matter at low density is stable in an inhomogeneous phase where skyrmions condensate into lumps while the remaining space is mostly empty. The aim of this paper is to proof quantitatively this prediction. In order to construct an inhomogeneous medium we distort the original FCC crystal to produce a phase of planar structures made of skyrmions. We implement mathematically these planar structures by means of the 't Hooft instanton solution using the Atiyah-Manton ansatz. The results of our calculation of the average density and energy confirm the prediction suggesting that the phase diagram of the dense skyrmion matter is a lot more complex than a simple phase transition from the skyrmion FCC crystal lattice to the half-skyrmion CC one. Our results show that skyrmion matter shares common properties with standard nuclear matter developing a skin and leading to a binding energy equation which resembles the Weiszaecker mass formula.
The inhomogeneous quark condensate, responsible for dynamical chiral symmetry breaking in cold nuclear matter, is studied by putting skyrmions onto the face-centered cubic crystal and treating the skyrmion matter as nuclear matter. By varying the crystal size, we explore the effect of density on the local structure of the quark-antiquark condensate. By endowing the light vector mesons $ρ$ and $ω$ with hidden local symmetry and incorporating a scalar meson as a dilaton of spontaneously broken scale symmetry, we uncover the intricate interplay of heavy mesons in the local structure of the quark …
We study the density dependence of the decay $π^0\to γγ$ using the Skyrme Lagrangian to describe simultaneously both the matter background and mesonic fluctuations. Pion properties such as mass and decay constant are modified by the medium. This leads to large suppression at high density of both photo-production from the neutral pion and the reverse process. The in-medium effective charge of $π^{\pm}$ are also discussed in the same framework.
The Skyrme model provides a novel unified approach to nuclear physics. In this approach, single baryon, baryonic matter and medium-modified hadron properties are treated on the same footing. Intrinsic density dependence (IDD) reflecting the change of vacuum by compressed baryonic matter figures naturally in the approach. In this article, we review the recent progress on accessing dense nuclear matter by putting baryons treated as solitons, namely, skyrmions, on crystal lattice with accents on the implications in compact stars.
Dense hadronic matter at low temperature is expected to be in crystal and at high density make a transition to a {\em chirally restored but color-confined} state which is a novel phase hitherto unexplored. This phase transition is predicted in both skyrmion matter in 4D and instanton matter in 5D, the former in the form of half-skyrmions and the latter in the form of half-instantons or dyons. We predict that when $K^-$'s are embedded in this half-skyrmion or half-instanton (dyonic) matter which may be reached not far above the normal density, there arises an enhanced attraction from the soft d…
We explore magnetic field effects on the nuclear matter based on the skrymion crystal approach for the first time. It is found that the magnetic effect plays the role of a catalyzer for the topological phase transition (topological deformation for the skyrmion crystal configuration from the skrymion phase to half-skyrmion phase). Furthermore, we observe that in the presence of the magnetic field, the inhomogeneous chiral condensate persists both in the skyrmion and half-skyrmion phases. Explicitly, as the strength of magnetic field gets larger, the inhomogeneous chiral condensate in the skyrmi…
We explore the hadron properties in dense baryonic matter in a unified way by using a Skyrme model constructed with an effective Lagrangian which includes the $ρ$ and $ω$ vector mesons as hidden gauge bosons and is valid up to $O(p^4)$ in chiral expansion including the homogeneous Wess-Zumino terms. With the two input values of pion decay constant and the lowest lying vector meson mass which can be fixed in free space, all the other low energy constants in the effective Lagrangian are determined by their master formulas derived from holographic QCD models, which allows us to study the baryonic…
Transition from baryonic matter to color-flavor-locked quark matter is described in terms of skyrmion matter changing into half-skyrmion matter. The intermediate phase between the density $n_p$ at which a skyrmion turns into two half skyrmions and the chiral transition density $n_c^{χSR}$ at which hadronic matter changes over to quark matter corresponds to a chiral symmetry restored phase characterized by a vanishing quark condensate and a {\em non-vanishing} pion decay constant. When hidden local fields are incorporated, the vector manifestation of Harada-Yamawaki HLS theory implies that as d…
We study the weak decay of the neutral pion to a neutrino-antineutrino pair, $π^0\to ν\barν$, in the Skyrme model. In baryon free-space the process is forbidden by helicity while in a dense baryonic medium, the process becomes possible already to leading order in $G_F$ due to the break-down of Lorentz symmetry in the background medium.
We elucidate magnetic effects in the skyrmion system to probe into the dense nuclear matter. We find a deformed $π^0$ dipole structure of a baryon induced by a magnetic field. We then extend our scope to stacked Skyrme crystal layers to scrutinize phases of magnetized nuclear matter. We observe a quantized magnetic flux and identify a phase transition from a crystalline state to a $π^0$ domain wall corresponding to a topological transmutation from $π_3(S^3)$ to $π_1(S^1)$. We establish the phase diagram, which could be explored also in analogous systems with two-component Bose-Einstein condens…
In this note, we report on a remarkable and surprising interplay between the omega meson and the dilaton chi in the structure of a single skyrmion as well as in the phase structure of dense skyrmion matter which may have a potentially important consequence on the properties of compact stars. In our continuing effort to understand hadronic matter at high density, we have developed a unified field theoretic formalism for dense skyrmion matter using a single Lagrangian to describe simultaneously both matter and meson fluctuations and studied in-medium properties of hadrons. The effective theory u…
The Skyrme model, an effective low energy theory rooted in large $N_c$ QCD, has been applied to the study of dense matter. Matter is described by various crystal structures of skyrmions. When this system is heated, the dominating thermal degrees of freedom are the fluctuating pions. Taking these mechanisms jointly produces a description of the chiral phase transition leading to the conventional phase diagram with critical temperatures and densities in agreement with expected values.
Hadron properties in dense medium are treated in a unified way in a skyrmion model constructed with an effective Lagrangian, in which the rho and omega vector mesons are introduced as hidden gauge bosons, valid up to O(p^4) terms in chiral expansion including the homogeneous Wess-Zumino terms. All the low energy constants - apart from f_pi and m_rho - are fixed by the master formula derived from the relation between 5-D hQCD and 4-D HLS. This allows one to pin down the density n_1/2 at which the skyrmions in medium fractionize into half-skyrmions, bringing in a drastic change in the EoS of den…
In continuation of our systematic effort to understand hadronic matter at high density, we study dense skyrmion matter and its chiral phase structure in an effective field theory implemented with the trace anomaly of QCD applicable in the large $N_c$ limit. By incorporating a dilaton field $χ$ associated with broken conformal symmetry of QCD into the simplest form of skyrmion Lagrangian, we simulate the effect of "sliding vacua" influenced by the presence of matter and obtain what could correspond to the ``intrinsic dependence" on the background of the system, i.e., matter density or temperatu…
In a previous article, the 4D half-skyrmion (or 5D dyonic salt) structure of dense baryonic matter described in crystalline configuration in the large $N_c$ limit was shown to impact nontrivially on how anti-kaons behave in compressed nuclear matter with a possible implication on an "ice-9" phenomenon of deeply bound kaonic matter and condensed kaons in compact stars. We extend the analysis to make a further prediction on the scaling properties of hadrons that have a surprising effect on the nuclear tensor forces, the symmetry energy and hence on the phase structure at high density. We treat t…
The hadronic matter described as a skyrmion matter embedded in an FCC crystal is found to turn into a half-skyrmion matter with vanishing (in the chiral limit) quark condensate and {\it non-vanishing} pion decay constant {$f_π$} at a density $n_{1/2}$ lower than or near the critical density $n_c$ at which hadronic matter changes over to a chiral symmetry restored phase with possibly deconfined quarks. When hidden local gauge fields and a dilaton scalar of spontaneously broken scale symmetry with decay constant $f_χ$ are incorporated, this half-skyrmion phase is characterized by $f_χ\approx f_π…
A chain of connections in compressed baryonic matter, up-to-date glaringly missing in nuclear effective field theory, between intrinsic or emergent symmetries of QCD, mesons-gluons dualities, vector meson dominance and Chern-Simons fields has recently been revealed, presaging a possible new paradigm in nuclear theory. It indicates a ubiquitous role, thus far unexplored, of hidden symmetries -- flavor-local and scale -- permeating from dilute baryonic systems to normal nuclear matter and then to compact-star matter. Here I give a brief account of the possibly "indispensable" relevance of the $η…
The dense baryonic matter and hadron properties in medium were simulated by using a Skyrme model including the ground state vector mesons introduced from the hidden local symmetry approach up to the next to leading order. We found that both the $ρ$ and $ω$ mesons affect the baryonic matter and medium modified hadron properties dramatically. The most remarkable observation is that, the pion decay constant and the nucleon mass have the similar density dependence which agrees with the large $N_c$ argument. Explicitly, they drop with increasing density in the Skyrmion phase and stop decreasing at …
As the first in a series of systematic work on dense hadronic matter, we study the properties of the pion in dense medium using Skyrme's effective Lagrangian as a unified theory of the hadronic interactions applicable in the large $N_c$ limit. Dense baryonic matter is described as the ground state of a skyrmion matter which appears in two differentiated phases as a function of matter density: i) at high densities as a stable cubic-centered (CC) half-skyrmion crystal; ii) at low densities as an unstable face-centered cubic (FCC) skyrmion crystal. We substitute the latter by a stable inhomogeneo…
We have developed a field theory formalism to calculate $in$-$medium$ properties of hadrons within a unified approach that exploits a single Lagrangian to describe simultaneously both matter background and meson fluctuations. In this paper we discuss the consequences on physical observables of a possible phase transition of hadronic matter taking place in the chiral limit. We pay special attention to the pion velocity $v_π$, which controls, through a dispersion relation, the pion propagation in the hadronic medium. The $v_π$ is defined in terms of parameters related to the matrix element in ma…
We propose a new chirality-imbalance phenomenon arising in baryonic/high dense matters under a magnetic field. A locally chiral-imbalanced (parity-odd) domain can be created due to the electromagnetically induced $U(1)_A$ anomaly in high-dense matters. The proposed local-chiral imbalance generically possesses a close relationship to a spacial distribution of an inhomogeneous chiral (pion)-vector current coupled to the magnetic field. To demonstrate such a nontrivial correlation, we take the skyrmion crystal approach to model baryonic/high dense matters. Remarkably enough, we find the chirality…
The half-skyrmions that appear in dense baryonic matter when skyrmions are put on crystals modify drastically hadron properties in dense medium and affect strongly the nuclear tensor forces, thereby influencing the equation of state (EoS) of dense nuclear and asymmetric nuclear matter. The matter comprised of half skyrmions has vanishing quark condensate but non-vanishing pion decay constant and could be interpreted as a hadronic dual of strong-coupled quark matter. We infer from this observation combined with certain predictions of hidden local symmetry in low-energy hadronic interactionsa a …
We describe the mapping at high density of topological structure of baryonic matter to a nuclear effective field theory that implements hidden symmetries emergent from strong nuclear correlations. The theory so constructed is found to be consistent with no conflicts with the presently available observations in both normal nuclear matter and compact-star matter. The hidden symmetries involved are "local flavor symmetry" of the vector mesons identified to be (Seiberg-)dual to the gluons of QCD and hidden "quantum scale symmetry" with an IR fixed point with a "genuine dilaton (GD)" characterized …
We clarify and extend further the idea developed in \cite{PKLMR,MLPR} that baryonic matter at high density has an emergent "pseudo-conformal symmetry." It is argued that as baryonic density exceeds $n \simeq n_{1/2} \gtrsim 2n_0$, a topology change mimicking the baryon-quark continuity takes place at $n_{1/2}$. In terms of skyrmions, this corresponds to the transition from skyrmions to half-skyrmions and impacts on the equation of state of dense baryonic matter. The emergence in medium at $n_{1/2}$ of parity-doublet symmetry -- which is invisible in QCD in matter-free vacuum -- plays the cruci…
QCD predicts matter at high density should exhibit color superconductivity. We review briefly several pertinent properties of color superconductivity and then discuss how baryons are realized in color superconductors. Especially, we explain an attempt to describe the color-flavor locked quark matter in terms of bosonic degrees of freedom, where the gaped quarks and Fermi sea are realized as Skyrmions, called superqualitons, and Q-matter, respectively.
We describe the on-going effort to formulate the baryon-quark continuity in terms of a topology change in the equation of state (EoS) of dense baryonic matter in analogy to -- and inspired by -- the mapping of the characteristics of Chern-Simon topological field theory to Kohn-Sham density functional theory in the fractional quantized Hall effect (FQHE). This is done by translating the density-dependent characteristics of the skyrmion-half-skyrmion transition formulated in the presence of hidden local symmetry and (hidden) scale symmetry to the density-dependent parameters of a renormalization…
When scale symmetry is implemented into hidden local symmetry in low-energy strong interactions to arrive at a scale-invariant hidden local symmetric (HLS) theory, the scalar $f_0(500)$ may be interpreted as pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone (pNG) boson, i.e., dilaton, of spontaneously broken scale invariance, joining the pseudo-scalar pNG bosons $π$ and the matter fields $V=(ρ,ω)$ as relevant degrees of freedom. Implementing the skyrmion-half-skyrmion transition predicted at large $N_c$ in QCD at a density roughly twice the nuclear matter density found in the crystal simulation of dense skyrmion matter,…
In this work, we study the jet momentum broadening in an inhomogeneous dense QCD medium. The transverse profile of this nuclear matter is described within a gradient expansion, and we focus on the leading gradient contributions. The leading parton is allowed to interact multiple times with the background through the soft gluon exchanges. We derive the associated final particle distribution using both the GLV opacity series and the BDMPS-Z formalism. We further discuss the modified factorization of the initial and final state effects and its consequences for phenomenological applications in the…
When skyrmions representing nucleons are put on crystal lattice and compressed to simulate high density, there is a transition above the normal nuclear matter density $n_0$ from a matter consisting of skyrmions with integer baryon charge to a state of half-skyrmions with half-integer baryon charge. We exploit this observation in an effective field theory formalism to access dense baryonic system. We find that the topology change involved implies a changeover from a Fermi liquid structure to a non-Fermi liquid with the chiral condensate in the nucleon "melted off." The $\sim 80%$ of the nucleon…
It has been shown in [32,33] in the framework of Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model with the assumption of spatially homogeneous condensates that in the large-$N_{c}$ limit ($N_{c}$ is the number of quark colours) there exist three dual symmetries of the thermodynamic potential, which describes dense quark matter with chiral and isospin imbalances. The main duality is between the chiral symmetry breaking and the charged pion condensation phenomena. There have been a lot of studies and hints that the ground state could be characterized by spatially inhomogeneous condensates, so the question arises if du…
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 Dilaton Model, where baryons arise as non-topological solitons built from the interaction of quarks and chiral mesons, shows in the high density low temperature regime a two phase scenario in the nuclear matter phase diagram. Dense soliton matter described by the Wigner-Seitz approximation generates a periodic potential in terms of the sigma and pion fields that leads to the formation of a band structure. The analysis up to three times nuclear matter density shows that soliton matter undergoes two separate phase transitions: a delocalization of the baryon number density leading to $…
In this paper we investigate the phase structure of a (1+1)-dimensional quark model with four-quark interaction and in the presence of baryon ($μ_B$), isospin ($μ_I$) and chiral isospin ($μ_{I5}$) chemical potentials. Spatially inhomogeneous chiral density wave (for chiral condensate) and single wave (for charged pion condensate) approaches are used. It is established that in the large-$N_c$ limit ($N_c$ is the number of colored quarks) there exists a duality correspondence between the chiral symmetry breaking phase and the charged pion condensation (PC) one. Moreover, it is shown that inhomog…
We investigate the effects of isospin asymmetry on the competition between color-superconductivity and inhomogeneous chiral symmetry breaking in dense two-flavor quark matter using an extended Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model. We confirm the appearance of a coexistence window where chiral symmetry is inhomogeneously broken and a nonzero spatially homogeneous diquark gap is present, consistently with previous works, and show that such a phase survives at nonzero isospin chemical potentials. We also discuss how the model phase structure becomes modified as large isospin asymmetries are considered.
We find that, when the dilaton is implemented as a (pseudo-)Nambu-Goldstone boson using a conformal compensator or "conformon" in a hidden gauge symmetric Lagrangian written to $O(p^4)$ from which baryons arise as solitons, namely, skyrmions, the vector manifestation and chiral symmetry restoration at high density predicted in hidden local symmetry theory --- which is consistent with Brown-Rho scaling --- are lost or sent to infinite density. It is shown that they can be restored if in medium the behavior of the $ω$ field is taken to deviate from that of the $ρ$ meson in such a way that the fl…
It is shown that explicitly broken scale symmetry is essential for dense skyrmion matter in hidden local symmetry theory. Consistency with the vector manifestation fixed point for the hidden local symmetry of the lowest-lying vector mesons and the dilaton limit fixed point for scale symmetry in dense matter is found to require that the anomalous dimension ($γ_{G^2}$) of the gluon field strength tensor squared ($G^2$) that represents the quantum trace anomaly should be $0 <γ_{G^2} <3$.
As an alternative approach to the infinite-array description of dense matter in the Skyrme model, we report about the properties of a single skyrmion on a compact 3-sphere of finite radius. The density of this matter can be increased by decreasing the hypersphere radius. As in the array calculations one encounters a transition to a distinct high density phase characterized by a delocalization in energy and baryon charge and by increased symmetries. We will argue that the high density phase has to be interpreted as chirally restored one. The arguments are based on the formation of complete chir…
The dilaton-limit fixed point and the scaling properties of hadrons in the close vicinity of the fixed point in dense baryonic matter uncovered in hidden local symmetry implemented with spontaneously broken scale symmetry are shown to reveal a surprisingly intricate interplay, hitherto unsuspected, between the origin of the bulk of proton mass and the renormalization-group flow of the ω-nuclear interactions. This rends a theoretical support to the previous (phenomenologically) observed correlation between the dropping nucleon mass and the behavior of the ω-nuclear interactions in dense matter …
An increasing number of model results suggests that chiral symmetry is broken inhomogeneously in a certain window at intermediate densities in the QCD phase diagram. This could have significant effects on the properties of compact stars, possibly leading to new astrophysical signatures. In this contribution we discuss this idea by reviewing recent results on inhomogeneous chiral symmetry breaking under an astrophysics-oriented perspective. After introducing two commonly studied spatial modulations of the chiral condensate, the chiral density wave and the real kink crystal, we focus on their pr…
In our continuing effort to understand hadronic matter at high density, we have developed a unified field theoretic formalism for dense skyrmion matter using a single Lagrangian to describe simultaneously both matter and meson fluctuations and studied in-medium properties of hadrons. Dropping the quartic Skyrme term, we incorporate into our previous Lagrangian the vector mesons rho and omega in a form which is consistent with the symmetries of QCD. The results that we have obtained, reported here, expose a hitherto unsuspected puzzle associated with the role the omega meson plays at short dist…
The notion that the scalar listed as $f_0 (500)$ in the particle data booklet is a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone (NG) boson of spontaneously broken scale symmetry, explicitly broken by a small departure from an infrared fixed point, is explored in nuclear dynamics. That notion which puts the scalar -- that we shall identify as a "dilaton" -- on the same footing as the pseudo-scalar pseudo-NG bosons, i.e., octet $π$, while providing a simple explanation for the $ΔI=1/2$ rule for kaon decay, generalizes the standard chiral perturbation theory (S$χ$PT) to "scale chiral perturbation theory," denoted $χ$P…
Topology effects have being extensively studied and confirmed in strongly correlated condensed matter physics. In the large color number limit of QCD, baryons can be regarded as topological objects -- skyrmions -- and the baryonic matter can be regarded as a skyrmion matter. We review in this paper the generalized effective field theory for dense compact-star matter constructed with the robust inputs obtained from the skyrmion approach to dense nuclear matter, relying to possible ``emergent" scale and local flavor symmetries at high density. All nuclear matter properties from the saturation de…
We study mass-radius relations for compact stars employing an equation of state (EOS) of dense matter based on a Skyrme fluid. The zero-temperature mean-field model is based on mesonic excitations, incorporates the scale breaking of QCD, and accommodates baryons (nucleons) which arise as a solitonic configuration of mesonic fields. Stable configurations are obtained for central densities $ρ_c/ρ_n\leq 5.0$ where $ρ_n=2.575\times 10^{14}$ g/cc is the nuclear saturation density. These {\it Skyrmion Stars} are mostly fluid, with a crust which we describe by the EOS of Baym, Pethick and Sutherland.…
We show that the cusp-like structure in the nuclear symmetry energy, a consequence of topology change, visible in the skyrmion lattice description of dense matter is extremely robust. It is present in the Skyrme model -- with the pion field only -- and is left unscathed by massive degrees of freedom such as the vector mesons $ρ$ and $ω$ and also the scalar meson introduced as a dilaton. It leads to the emergence of parity-doubling at the skyrmion-half-skyrmion transition and impacts on the nuclear symmetry energy "wilderness" landscape, weeding out roughly half of the wilderness. It is shown t…
Using the Callan-Klebanov bound state model for hyperons simulated on crystal lattice to describe strange baryonic matter, we argue that to ${\cal O} (1)$ in the large $N_c$ counting to which the theory is robust, hyperons can figure only when -- or after -- kaons condense in compact-star matter. We also discuss how the skyrmion-half-skyrmion topological transition affects the equation of state (EoS) of dense baryonic matter. The observations made in this note open wide the issue of how to theoretically access the EoS of compact stars.
Unlike the octet baryons for $N_f=3$, there is no skyrmion coming from the $η^\prime$ meson. It is instead described as a fractional quantum Hall droplet, a pancake or a pita involving a singular $η^\prime$ ring in which Chern-Simons fields live. By incorporating hidden local symmetry and hidden scale symmetry in nuclear dynamics, I describe how to access baryon-charged quantum Hall droplets in dense nuclear matter in terms of the nuclear scale-chiral effective field theory approach ``G$n$EFT" with the $U_A(1)$ anomaly taken into account. I discuss how the single-flavor baryon that I will call…
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…
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.
How the axial coupling constant $g_A$ in nuclear Gamow-Teller transitions described in shell model gets "quenched" to a universal constant close to 1 can be explained by nuclear correlations in Fermi-liquid fixed point theory using a scale-symmetric chiral Lagrangian supplemented with hidden local symmetric vector mesons. Contrary to what one might naively suspect -- and has been discussed in some circles, there is no fundamental quenching at nuclear matter density due to QCD condensates. When the density of many-body systems treated with the same Lagrangian increases beyond the density $n=n_{…
I discuss a novel scenario on how baryonic matter could turn into a Fermi liquid of fractionalized baryons driven by high density inside compact stars. It involves the "hidden" local vector bosons $ρ$ and $ω$ together with the "hidden" scale symmetry dilaton $χ$, both taken to be "dual" to the quarks and gluons of QCD in the sense of quark $\leftrightarrow$ hadron duality and offers a possibility, exploiting the "Cheshire Cat Principle", to unify the "dichotomy" of baryons described in terms of skyrmions and fractional quantum Hall (FQH) droplets {\it and} to explore how the baryonic matter co…
We demonstrate the existence of an anomaly-induced inhomogeneous phase in a class of vector-like gauge theories without sign problem, thus disproving the long-standing conjecture that the absence of sign problem precludes spontaneous breaking of translational invariance. The presence of the phase in the two-color modification of quantum chromodynamics can be tested by an independent nonperturbative evaluation of the neutral pion decay constant as a function of external magnetic field. Our results provide a benchmark for future lattice studies of inhomogeneous phases in dense quark matter.
We investigate the stability of the Magnetic Dual Chiral Density Wave (MDCDW) phase of cold and dense QCD against collective low-energy fluctuations of the order parameter. The appearance of additional structures in the system free-energy due to the explicit breaking of the rotational and isospin symmetries by the external magnetic field and the field-induced asymmetry of the lowest Landau level modes play a crucial role in the analysis. The new structures not only affect the condensate minimum equations, but also the spectrum of the thermal fluctuations, which lacks the transverse soft modes …
We study the spectrum of light plasmons in the (gapped and gapless) two-flavor color superconducting phases and its connection with the chromomagnetic instabilities and the structure of the ground state. It is revealed that the chromomagnetic instabilities in the 4-7th and 8th gluonic channels correspond to two very different plasmon spectra. These spectra lead us to the unequivocal conclusion about the existence of gluonic condensates (some of which can be spatially inhomogeneous) in the ground state. We also argue that spatially inhomogeneous gluonic condensates should exist in the three-fla…
We investigate neutral quark matter with homogeneous and inhomogeneous color condensates at finite temperature in the frame of an extended NJL model. By calculating the Meissner masses squared and gap susceptibility, the uniform color superconductor is stable only in a temperature window close to the critical temperature and becomes unstable against LOFF phase, mixed phase and gluonic phase at low temperatures. The introduction of the inhomogeneous phases leads to disappearance of the strange intermediate temperature 2SC/g2SC and changes the phase diagram of neutral dense quark matter signific…
