Functional renormalization group approach to color superconducting phase transition

Abstract

We investigate the order of the color superconducting phase transition using the functional renormalization group approach. We analyze the Ginzburg-Landau effective theory of color superconductivity and more generic scalar $SU(N_c)$ gauge theories by calculating the $\beta$ function of the gauge coupling in arbitrary dimension $d$ based on two different regularization schemes. We find that in $d=3$, due to gluon fluctuation effects, the $\beta$ function never admits an infrared fixed point solution. This indicates that, unlike the ordinary superconducting transition, color superconductivity can only show a first-order phase transition.

16 pages, matches published version