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arXiv · 0911.2333

Inhomogeneous phases of strongly interacting matter

Abstract

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 bordered by two second-order transition lines.

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Michael Buballa, Dominik Nickel. 2009-11-12. Inhomogeneous phases of strongly interacting matter. https://arxiv.org/abs/0911.2333

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