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Crystalline phases by an improved gradient expansion technique

S. Carignano, M. Mannarelli, F. Anzuini, and O. Benhar
Phys. Rev. D 97, 036009 – Published 12 February 2018

Abstract

We develop an innovative technique for studying inhomogeneous phases with a spontaneous broken symmetry. The method relies on the knowledge of the exact form of the free energy in the homogeneous phase and on a specific gradient expansion of the order parameter. We apply this method to quark matter at vanishing temperature and large chemical potential, which is expected to be relevant for astrophysical considerations. The method is remarkably reliable and fast as compared to performing the full numerical diagonalization of the quark Hamiltonian in momentum space and is designed to improve the standard Ginzburg-Landau expansion close to the phase transition points. For definiteness, we focus on inhomogeneous chiral symmetry breaking, accurately reproducing known results for one-dimensional and two-dimensional modulations and examining novel crystalline structures, as well. Consistently with previous results, we find that the energetically favored modulation is the so-called one-dimensional real-kink crystal. We propose a qualitative description of the pairing mechanism to motivate this result.

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  • Received 4 December 2017

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.97.036009

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.

Published by the American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Particles & Fields

Authors & Affiliations

S. Carignano and M. Mannarelli

  • INFN, Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, Via G. Acitelli, 22, I-67100 Assergi (AQ), Italy

F. Anzuini and O. Benhar

  • INFN and Dipartimento di Fisica, Sapienza Università di Roma, I-00185 Roma, Italy

Article Text

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Issue

Vol. 97, Iss. 3 — 1 February 2018

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