Ginzburg-Landau phase diagram for dense matter with axial anomaly, strange quark mass, and meson condensation

Abstract

We discuss the phase structure of dense matter, in particular the nature of the transition between hadronic and quark matter. Calculations within a Ginzburg-Landau approach show that the axial anomaly can induce a critical point in this transition region. This is possible because in three-flavor quark matter with instanton effects a chiral condensate can be added to the color-flavor locked (CFL) phase without changing the symmetries of the ground state. In (massless) two-flavor quark matter such a critical point is not possible since the corresponding color superconductor (2SC) does not break chiral symmetry. We study the effects of a nonzero but finite strange quark mass which interpolates between these two cases. Since at ultra-high density the first reaction of CFL to a nonzero strange quark mass is to develop a kaon condensate, we extend previous Ginzburg-Landau studies by including such a condensate. We discuss the fate of the critical point systematically and show that the continuity between hadronic and quark matter can be disrupted by the onset of a kaon condensate. Moreover, we identify the mass terms in the Ginzburg-Landau potential which are needed for the 2SC phase to occur in the phase diagram.

25 pages, 10 figures, v2: small modifications; references added; version to appear in Phys.Rev.D

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• Higgs-confinement phase transitions with fundamental representation matter
• Chiral pasta
• Non-Abelian Alice strings in two-flavor dense QCD
• New color-magnetic defects in dense quark matter
• Topological confinement of vortices in two-flavor dense QCD
• Alice meets Boojums in neutron stars: vortices penetrating two-flavor quark-hadron continuity
• New dynamic critical phenomena in nuclear and quark superfluids
• Some recent progress on quark pairings in dense quark and nuclear matter
• Multicomponent Superfluids and Superconductors in Dense Nuclear and Quark Matter