We study the phase structure of the two-flavor Nambu--Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model in the chiral limit, extending a previous study of the competition of an inhomogeneous chiral phase and a two-flavor color-superconducting (2SC) phase [1, 2]. There, an analytic expression for the dispersion relations for quasiparticle excitations in the presence of both a particular inhomogeneous chiral condensate, the so-called chiral density wave (CDW), and a homogeneous 2SC condensate was found. In this work we show how to determine the dispersion relations for arbitrary modulations of the chiral condensate in the presence of a homogeneous 2SC condensate, if the dispersion relations in the absence of color superconductivity are known. In our calculations, we employ two different Ansätze for the inhomogeneous chiral condensate, the CDW as well as the real-kink crystal (RKC). Depending on the value of the diquark coupling we find a region of the phase diagram where the inhomogeneous chiral and the 2SC condensates coexist, confirming results of Refs. [1, 2]. Decreasing the diquark coupling favors the inhomogeneous phase over the coexistence phase. On the other hand, increasing the diquark coupling leads to a larger 2SC phase, while the inhomogeneous chiral and the coexistence phases become smaller. In agreement with previous studies the RKC Ansatz is energetically preferred over the CDW Ansatz. Both Ansätze lead to a qualitatively similar phase diagram, however the coexistence phase is smaller for the RKC Ansatz.
In this talk we discuss the role of inhomogeneous phases in the phase diagram of the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (NJL) and the quark meson (QM) model. By means of a generalized Ginzburg-Landau (GL) expansion it is concluded that the critical point in the mean-field phase diagram of the NJL model is in fact a Lifshitz point where homogeneous spontaneously broken, inhomogeneous and restored phases meet. This picture is confirmed by a mean-field calculation for inhomogeneous phases with a one-dimensional modulation. For the latter it is shown that recent results within lower dimensional models can be exte…
We consider how does the introduction of a Polyakov loop affects the spatially inhomogeneous quark condensate. The primary result of our work is that the existence of the spatially non-uniform chiral phase is confirmed within the Polyakov NJL model in a chiral limit. These findings are obtained both in a 3d-cutoff and in a Schwinger (proper time) regularization schemes.
The properties of two-flavored massive Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model in (1+1)-dimensional spacetime are investigated in the presence of isospin and quark number chemical potentials. The consideration is performed in the large-$N_c$ limit, where $N_c$ is the number of colored quarks. It is shown in the framework of this model that charged pion condensation phenomenon of dense quark/hadron isotopically asymmetric matter is rather a spatially inhomogeneous than a homogeneous one.
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 calculate numerically the phase diagram of the three-flavor Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model at zero and finite temperature as a function of the up, down, and strange quark chemical potentials. We focus on the competition between pseudoscalar condensation and color superconductivity. We find that the two types of phases are separated by first-order transitions.
We analyze the thermodynamical properties, at finite density and nonzero temperature, of the (1+1)-dimensional chiral Gross-Neveu model (the NJL_2 model), using the exact inhomogeneous (crystalline) condensate solutions to the gap equation. The continuous chiral symmetry of the model plays a crucial role, and the thermodynamics leads to a broken phase with a periodic spiral condensate, the "chiral spiral", as a thermodynamically preferred limit of the more general "twisted kink crystal" solution of the gap equation. This situation should be contrasted with the Gross-Neveu model, which has a di…
In this work we study the $3+1$-dimensional Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model in the mean field-approximation. We carry out calculations using five different regularization schemes (two continuum and three lattice regularization schemes) with particular focus on inhomogeneous phases and condensates. The regularization schemes lead to drastically different inhomogeneous regions. We provide evidence that inhomogeneous condensates appear for all regularization schemes almost exclusively at values of the chemical potential and with wave numbers, which are of the order of or even larger than the corre…
We investigate the possibility of spatially homogeneous and inhomogeneous chiral fermion-antifermion condensation and superconducting fermion-fermion pairing in the (1+1)-dimensional model by Chodos {\it et al.} [ Phys. Rev. D 61, 045011 (2000)] generalized to continuous chiral invariance. The consideration is performed at nonzero values of temperature $T$, electric charge chemical potential $μ$ and chiral charge chemical potential $μ_5$. It is shown that at $G_1<G_2$, where $G_1$ and $G_2$ are the coupling constants in the fermion-antifermion and fermion-fermion channels, the $(μ,μ_5)$-phase …
We present results of the calculation of phase diagrams of the three-flavor NJL model as a function of temperature and different quark chemical potentials. These phase diagrams are an extension of earlier calculations in the literature in which either only the possibility of color superconductivity or the possibility of pseudoscalar condensation was investigated. This study takes into account both options and hence allows one to investigate their competition. It turns out that the color superconducting phase and the phase in which the pseudoscalar mesons condense are separated by a first order…
In this paper, we study the possibility of an inhomogeneous quark condensate in the 1+1 dimensional Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model in the large-$N_c$ limit at finite temperature $T$ and quark chemical potential $μ$ using dimensional regularization. The phase diagram in the $μ$--$T$ plane is mapped out. At zero temperature, an inhomogeneous phase with a chiral-density wave exists for all values of $μ>μ_c$. Performing a Ginzburg-Landau analysis, we show that in the chiral limit, the critical point and the Lifschitz point coincide. We also consider the competition between a chiral-density wave and a co…
We discuss inhomogeneous ground states of the Nambu-Jona-Lasino (NJL) and quark-meson (QM) model within mean-field approximation and their possible existence in the respective phase diagrams. For this purpose we focus on lower dimensional modulations and point out that known solutions in the 2+1 and 1+1 dimensional (chiral) Gross-Neveu (GN) model can be lifted to the to the 3+1 dimensional NJL model. This is worked out in detail for one-dimensional modulations and numerical results for the phase diagrams are presented. Focus is put on the critical point and on vanishing temperatures. As an int…
We analyze the phase diagram of a three-flavor Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model at finite temperature $T$ and chemical potentials $μ_u, μ_d, μ_s$. We study the competition of pion and kaon condensation and we propose a physical situation in which kaon condensation could be led only by light quark finite densities.
We investigate the role of the isoscalar vector interaction and the dynamics of the Polyakov loop on inhomogeneous phases in the phase diagram of the two-flavor Nambu-Jona--Lasinio (NJL) model. Thereby we concentrate on phases with a one-dimensional modulation, explicitly domain-wall solitons and, for comparison, the chiral spiral. While the inclusion of the Polyakov loop merely leads to quantitative changes compared to the original NJL model, the presence of a repulsive vector-channel interaction has significant qualitative effects: Whereas for homogeneous phases the first-order phase transit…
In many models in condensed matter physics and high-energy physics, one finds inhomogeneous phases at high density and low temperature. These phases are characterized by a spatially dependent condensate or order parameter. A proper calculation requires that one takes the vacuum fluctuations of the model into account. These fluctuations are ultraviolet divergent and must be regularized. We discuss different consistent ways of regularizing and renormalizing quantum fluctuations, focusing on a symmetric energy cutoff scheme and dimensional regularization. We apply these techniques calculating the…
It is known that, in the chiral limit, spatially inhomogeneous chiral condensate occurs in the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model at finite density within a mean-field approximation. We study here how an introduction of current quark mass affects the ground state with the spatially inhomogeneous chiral condensate. Numerical calculations show that, even if the current quark mass is introduced, the spatially inhomogeneous chiral condensate can take place. In order to obtain the ground state, the thermodynamic potential is calculated with a mean-field approximation. The influence of finite current ma…
In this talk we present investigation of 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 homogeneous and inhomogeneous (chiral density wave (for chiral condensate) and single wave (for charged pion condensate)) condensates are considered. 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 one. Th…
We study pion condensation and the phase structure in a two-flavor Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model in the presence of baryon chemical potential $μ$ and isospin chemical potential $μ_I$at zero and finite temperature. There is a competition between the chiral condensate and a Bose-Einstein condensate of charged pions. In the chiral limit, the chiral condensate vanishes for any finite value of the isospin chemical potential, while there is a charged pion condensate that depends on the chemical potentials and the temperature. At the physical point, the chiral condensate is always nonzero, while the charg…
We use a Nambu-Jona Lasinio type model to investigate the phase diagram of dense quark matter under neutron star conditions in mean field approximation. The model contains selfconsistently determined quark masses and allows for diquark condensation in the scalar as well as in the pseudoscalar channel. The latter gives rise to the possibility of K^0 condensation in the CFL phase. In agreement with earlier studies we find that this CFLK^0 phase covers large regions of the phase diagram and that the predominant part of this phase is fully gapped. We show, however, that there exists a region at ve…
We explore the inhomogeneous QCD phases at finite density and temperature using a (3+1)-dimensional Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model in the large Nc limit with an additional attractive tensor-tensor interaction channel. For single modulated solutions, the problem reduces to solving the gap equation of a Chiral Gross-Neveu (NJL2) theory, whose minimum solution is a periodic array of chirally twisted kinks. At zero temperature, the minimum solution reduces to the quarkyonic chiral spiral found in quarkyonic matter. The connection between the quarkyonic matter and our (3+1)-dimensional NJL model is…
We investigate the effects of isospin asymmetry on inhomogeneous chiral symmetry breaking phases within the two-flavor NJL model. After introducing a plane-wave ansatz for each quark-flavor condensate, we find that, as long as their periodicities are enforced to be equal, a non-zero isospin chemical potential shrinks the size of the inhomogeneous phase. The asymmetry reached in charge neutral matter is nevertheless not excessively large, so that an inhomogeneous window is still present in the phase diagram. Lifting the constraint of equal periodicities alters the picture significantly, as the …
We study the phase diagram of strongly interacting matter including the inhomogeneous phase of Chiral Density Waves (CDW) within the Polyakov loop extended Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (PNJL) model. We discuss the phase structure taking into account density and flavour dependence of the Polyakov loop potential parameter and temperature dependence of the four-point coupling constant of the NJL model. It is shown that the CDW phase exists and that can be interpreted as a special realisation of quarkyonic matter. This fact is of particular interest because the existence of homogeneous quarkyonic matter is …
We use a numerical method, the finite-mode approach, to study inhomogeneous condensation in effective models for QCD in a general framework. Former limitations of considering a specific ansatz for the spatial dependence of the condensate are overcome. Different error sources are analyzed and strategies to minimize or eliminate them are outlined. The analytically known results for $1+1$ dimensional models (such as the Gross-Neveu model and extensions of it) are correctly reproduced using the finite-mode approach. Moreover, the NJL model in $3+1$ dimensions is investigated and its phase diagram …
Several model calculations of the QCD phase structure at nonzero temperature and density suggest that in certain regions of the phase diagram inhomogeneous condensates are favored over homogeneous ones. In particular, in a two-flavor NJL model in the chiral limit the would-be first-order boundary associated with the chiral phase transition is entirely covered by an inhomogeneous phase, characterized by a spatially modulated chiral condensate, whose tip coincides exactly with the chiral critical point. In this contribution we discuss how this result is altered by the inclusion of nonzero quark …
We discuss possible inhomogeneous phases in two regions of the QCD phase diagram: We begin with color superconducting quark matter at moderately high densities, which is an imbalanced Fermi system due to the finite strange quark mass and neutrality constraints. Within an NJL-type toy model we find that this situation could lead to the formation of a soliton lattice. Similar solutions also exist in the context of the chiral phase transition. As an interesting result, the first-order transition line in the phase diagram of homogeneous phases gets replaced by an inhomogeneous phase which is borde…
In the past few years, a growing number of compelling arguments, backed up by model calculations, pointed out that the intermediate-density region of the QCD phase diagram may be characterized by the formation of inhomogeneous condensates which spontaneously break some of the spatial symmetries of the theory. In the following we provide a brief recapitulation of these arguments and describe some recent results in a 3+1-dimensional QCD-inspired NJL model with quark-hole condensation in the form of a plane wave in the scalar and tensor channels. This model exhibits particular features in close a…
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…
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 explore the phase diagram of NJL-type models near the chiral critical point allowing for phases with spatially inhomogeneous chiral condensates. In the chiral limit it turns out that the region in the mean-field phase diagram where those phases are energetically preferred very generically reaches out to the chiral critical point. The preferred inhomogeneous ground state in this vicinity possibly resembles a lattice of domain wall solitons. This raises the question of their relevance for the phase diagram of QCD.
We explore, using a Ginzburg-Landau expansion of the free energy, the Larkin-Ovchinnikov-Fulde-Ferrell (LOFF) phase of QCD with three flavors, using the NJL four-fermion coupling to mimic gluon interactions. We find that, below the point where the QCD homogeneous superconductive phases should give way to the normal phase, Cooper condensation of the pairs u-s and d-u is possible, but in the form of the inhomogeneous LOFF pairing.
We study a Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (NJL) type model with two-flavor quark matter in $β$-equilibrium. It turns out that the system develops instabilities in the dispersion relations of the diquark fields, i.e., the velocity squared $v^2$ becomes negative in a certain region of the electron chemical potential. The critical point is the same as that of the chromomagnetic instability. The results imply the existence of spatially inhomogeneous diquark condensates in the genuine vacuum. We also discuss gauge equivalent classes between the inhomogeneous diquark condensates and gluon condensates.
We review in detail recent advances in our understanding of the phase structure and the phase transitions of hadronic matter in strong magnetic fields $B$ and zero quark chemical potentials $μ_f$. Many aspects of QCD are described using low-energy effective theories and models such as the MIT bag model, the hadron resonance gas model, chiral perturbation theory, the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model, the quark-meson (QM) model and Polyakov-loop extended versions of the NJL and QM models. We critically examine their properties and applications. This includes mean-field calculations as well as appr…
We review the current status of the research on effective nonlocal NJL-like chiral quark models with separable interactions, focusing on the application of this approach to the description of the properties of hadronic and quark matter under extreme conditions. The analysis includes the predictions for various hadron properties in vacuum, as well as the study of the features of deconfinement and chiral restoration phase transitions for systems at finite temperature and/or density. We also address other related subjects, such as the study of phase transitions for imaginary chemical potentials, …
Magnetic catalysis is the enhancement of a condensate due to the presence of an external magnetic field. Magnetic catalysis at $T=0$ is a robust phenomenon in low-energy theories and models of QCD as well as in lattice simulations. We review the underlying physics of magnetic catalysis from both perspectives. The quark-meson model is used as a specific example of a model that exhibits magnetic catalysis. Regularization and renormalization are discussed and we pay particular attention to a consistent and correct determination of the parameters of the Lagrangian using the on-shell renormalizatio…
The quark-meson model is often used as an effective low-energy model for QCD to study the chiral transition at finite temperature $T$, baryon chemical potential $μ_B$, and isospin chemical potential $μ_I$. The parameters of the model are determined by matching the meson and quark masses, as well as the pion decay constant to their physical values using the on-shell and modified minimal subtraction schemes. In this paper, we study the possibility of different phases at zero temperature. In particular, we investigate the competition between an inhomogeneous chiral condensate and a pion condensat…
We use the Polyakov-loop extended two-flavor quark-meson model as a low-energy effective model for QCD to study 1) the possibility of inhomogeneous chiral condensates and its competition with a homogeneous pion condensate in the $μ$--$μ_I$ plane at $T=0$ and 2) the phase diagram in the $μ_I$--$T$ plane. In the $μ$--$μ_I$ plane, we find that an inhomogeneous chiral condensate only exists for pion masses lower that 37.1 MeV and does not coexist with a homogeneous pion condensate. In the $μ_I$--$T$ plane, we find that the phase transition to a Bose-condensed phase is of second order for all value…
The two-Equation of State (EoS) model is used to describe the hadron-quark phase transition in asymmetric matter formed at high density in heavy-ion collisions. For the quark phase, the three-flavor Nambu--Jona-Lasinio (NJL) effective theory is used to investigate the influence of dynamical quark mass effects on the phase transition. At variance to the MIT-Bag results, with fixed current quark masses, the main important effect of the chiral dynamics is the appearance of an End-Point for the coexistence zone. We show that a first order hadron-quark phase transition may take place in the region …
Despite recent advancements in the study and understanding of the phase diagram of strongly interacting matter, the region of high baryonic densities and low temperatures has remained difficult to reach in the lab. Things are expected to change with the planned HIC experiments at FAIR in Germany and NICA in Russia, which will open a window to the high-density-low-temperature segment of the QCD phase map, providing a unique opportunity to test the validity of model calculations that have predicted the formation of spatially inhomogeneous phases with broken chiral symmetry at intermediate-to-hig…
We study the phase diagram of a two component Fermi system with a weak attractive interaction. Our analysis includes the leading order Hartree energy shifts and pairing correlations at finite temperature and chemical potential difference between the two fermion species. We show that in an asymmetric system, the Hartree shift to the single particle energies are important for the phase competition between normal and superfluid phase and can change the phase transition curve qualitatively. At large asymmetry we find that a novel but somewhat fragile superfluid state can be favored due to finite t…
Light mesons $(σ, π^0, π^\pm)$ are investigated in $T-μ_B-μ_I-eB$ space by using a two-flavor NJL model, which are related to the chiral symmetry restoration and pion superfluid phase transition. In $T-μ_B-eB$ space, during the chiral restoration process, the mass of pseudo-Goldstone mode $π^0$ keeps increasing, together with the sudden mass jump. At the critical end point region, $π^0$ meson has a very sharp but continuous mass increase, together with a sudden mass jump at the Mott transition, and in the first order chiral phase transition region nearby, we observe twice $π^0$ mass jumps, ind…
