Phases of cold, dense quarks at large N(c)

By Larry McLerran, R. Pisarski. 2007

562 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract In the limit of a large number of colors, N c , we suggest that gauge theories can exhibit several distinct phases at nonzero temperature and quark density. Two are familiar: a cold, dilute phase of confined hadrons, where the pressure is ∼1, and a hot phase of deconfined quarks and gluons, with pressure ∼ N c 2 . When the quark chemical potential μ ∼ 1 , the deconfining transition temperature, T d , is independent of μ . For T T d , as μ increases above the mass threshold, baryons quickly form a dense phase where the pressure is ∼ N c . As illustrated by a Skyrme crystal, chiral symmetry can be both spontaneously broken, and then restored, in the dense phase. While the pressure is ∼ N c , like that of (non-ideal) quarks, the dense phase is still confined, with interactions near the Fermi surface those of baryons, and not of quarks. Thus in the chirally symmetric region, baryons near the Fermi surface are parity doubled. We suggest possible implications for the phase diagram of QCD.

Subfields: Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d8a1ecd8a68262b0ad3132d4091ae16e668d85ce

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Citations in the corpus

QCD at finite temperature and chemical potential from Dyson–Schwinger equations (2018, background): “ition line at zero chemical potential, but joins the chiral transition at and beyond the critical end-point. Thus in this region of the phase diagram there is no quarkyonic phase in the sense of Ref. [69]. The (brown) shaded area indicates the width of the deconﬁnement cross-over deﬁned by a 20 % ra”
CORE-COLLAPSE SUPERNOVA EXPLOSIONS TRIGGERED BY A QUARK–HADRON PHASE TRANSITION DURING THE EARLY POST-BOUNCE PHASE (2010, background): “This is an active subject of research where several aspects, such as the chiral phase transition in general, the hadronic freeze out, the existence of a possible quarkyonic phase (McLerran & Pisarski 2007) and the nature of the transition between hadronic and quark matter, are investigated.”
From hadrons to quarks in neutron stars: a review (2017, background): “The properties of such matter have been discussed in the context of quarkyonic matter [228], discussed in section 5.”
The phase diagram of dense QCD (2010, background): “Such cold dense matter in the Nc = ∞ world is named quarkyonic matter [58].”