arXiv subjects

Dyana C. Duarte

Publications and source records attributed to Dyana C. Duarte.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Dense and Cold Magnetized Quark Matter: A Review of Magnetic-Field-Independent Regularization and the Medium Separation Scheme

We present a comprehensive review of regularization schemes for magnetized dense quark matter within effective models of quantum chromodynamics, focusing on the Magnetic-Field-Independent Regularization (MFIR) and the Medium Separation Scheme (MSS) at finite chemical potential and magnetic field. In nonrenormalizable frameworks such as the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model, the treatment of ultraviolet divergences is crucial, particularly in magnetized and dense environments where conventional regularization procedures may introduce unphysical artifacts. We show that MFIR consistently isolates divergent vacuum contributions from finite magnetic-field-dependent terms, while MSS extends this separation to the medium sector, ensuring that only vacuum quantities are regularized. Within this unified framework, we analyze the thermodynamics of cold and dense quark matter, including color-superconducting phases, and demonstrate that the superconducting gap remains finite at large chemical potentials, even in the presence of strong magnetic fields. In contrast to results obtained with traditional regularization schemes, we find no evidence for a transition to a normal phase at zero temperature, highlighting the importance of a proper separation between vacuum and medium contributions. These results eliminate spurious oscillations and other nonphysical artifacts, leading to a more robust and physically consistent description of strongly interacting matter under extreme conditions relevant to compact stars and heavy-ion collisions.

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arXiv2026

From Threshold Crossing to Wave-function Renormalization: Defining the Pion Mott Temperature in a Magnetic Field

We investigate the dissociation of the neutral pion in hot magnetized quark matter within the two-flavor Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model. At zero magnetic field, the Mott temperature is conventionally determined by $m_{π^0}(T_{\rm Mott})=2M(T_{\rm Mott})$, above which a real pole ceases to exist. At finite magnetic field, Landau quantization replaces this single threshold by a hierarchy of quark--antiquark continua and generates multiple solutions of the pion pole equation, rendering a direct threshold-crossing criterion ambiguous since a real pion solution below the lowest nominal threshold always exists. We therefore propose to define the magnetic Mott temperature through the inflection point of the pion wave-function renormalization factor $Z_{π^0}(T,eB)$ of that lowest pole, corresponding to the fastest loss of its spectral function strength. The prescription reproduces the conventional Mott temperature as $eB\to 0$ and tracks the chiral pseudocritical temperature for both constant and magnetic-field-dependent couplings. Our results characterize pion dissociation in a magnetic field as a spectral crossover rather than a simple threshold crossing.

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arXiv2026

Speed of sound peak in two-color dense QCD: confronting effective models with lattice data

Lattice simulations of two-color, two-flavor Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) at finite quark chemical potential have revealed a distinctive peak structure in the sound velocity. Although chiral perturbation theory (ChPT) and the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model have been employed to explain this phenomenon, neither approach has fully captured the observed behavior. To address this discrepancy, we have extended the NJL framework by incorporating the Medium Separation Scheme (MSS). This approach isolates medium contributions from divergent integrals, allowing for a more accurate treatment of finite-density effects. Our results indicate a clear increase in the diquark gap ($Δ$) with increasing chemical potential, consistent with what is also seen in perturbative QCD predictions at high densities. {}Furthermore, the MSS-modified NJL model successfully reproduces the observed peak in the sound velocity.

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arXiv2026

Medium separation scheme effects on the magnetized and cold two-flavor superconducting quark matter

We analyze the impact of the Medium Separation Scheme (MSS) on two-flavor color superconducting (2SC) dense quark matter under the influence of a constant external magnetic field. The effects of the proper treatment of the model divergences are examined through a comparison of different approaches, including the combined implementation of the Magnetic Field Independent Regularization (MFIR) and the MSS, as well as the standard use of smooth form factors. Our findings for the Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model emphasize the critical role of properly separating medium effects from vacuum contributions in the model. The combined MFIR-MSS scheme suppresses spurious unphysical oscillations, often misinterpreted in the literature as de Haas--van Alphen oscillations, and ensures the correct high-density behavior of the diquark condensate. Furthermore, within the MSS framework, the magnetization remains positive across the explored parameter space, in sharp contrast with the behavior obtained in the traditional approach.

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arXiv2026

Violation of the Conformal Limit at Finite Density: Insights from Effective Models and Lattice QCD

In this work, we discuss recent results obtained with the application of the medium separation scheme (MSS) in different contexts where a clear violation of the conformal limit for the speed of sound at finite density has been observed in Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). We analyze several scenarios, including QCD at finite isospin density, two-color QCD, and two-flavor color superconductivity. Whenever possible, we compare our findings with lattice QCD (LQCD) results, showing that the Nambu--Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model combined with the MSS provides a consistent description across different regimes of the QCD phase diagram. Our analysis highlights how effective models, when properly regularized, can capture essential nonperturbative features of dense QCD matter, offering complementary insights to lattice simulations.

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arXiv2026

Speed of sound peak in isospin QCD: a natural prediction of the Medium Separation Scheme

We present predictions for the zero-temperature equation of state at finite isospin density using the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model within the medium separation scheme (MSS) -- a scheme that explicitly disentangles medium effects from the ultraviolet divergent vacuum terms. Recent lattice QCD results reveal a nonmonotonic speed of sound ($c_s^2$) as a function of isospin chemical potential ($μ_I$), exhibiting explicit violation of the conformal bound $c_s^2 = 1/3$. These findings have attracted significant theoretical interest, as established models -- including the NJL model -- failed to anticipate this behavior prior to lattice simulations. Conventional NJL implementations yield unphysical artifacts, often attributed to regularization scale sensitivity stemming from nonrenormalizability. However, in this work, we demonstrate that the standard NJL framework combined with MSS quantitatively reproduces state-of-the-art lattice data for isospin QCD.

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arXiv2025

Two-flavor chirally imbalanced quark matter beyond large $N_c$

We investigate a chirally imbalanced medium in the context of the two-flavor Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model using both the large-$N_c$ (LN) and beyond large-$N_c$ (BLN) approximations. To incorporate BLN effects, we consider the optimized perturbation theory (OPT) to the first nontrivial order, which includes two-loop (exchange) contributions. This procedure allows us to explicitly explore how finite $N_c$ corrections affect the thermodynamics as well as the phase diagram of chirally imbalanced quark matter. We then compare the results obtained with a sharp three-dimensional cutoff -- generically referred to as the traditional regularization scheme -- and with an alternative procedure called the medium separation scheme (MSS). In the first case, we observe that the pseudocritical temperature decreases as the chiral chemical potential increases, an effect dubbed inverse chiral catalysis. On the other hand, when considering the MSS regularization, which properly isolates the medium contributions from the vacuum, we find the opposite result. We show that the results obtained with MSS are consistent with well-established LQCD data in both the LN and BLN approximations. Finally, we suggest that to cope with the high-density limit, the standard OPT interpolation prescription must be modified with the inclusion of an extra variational parameter.

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arXiv2024

Deconfinement and chiral phase transitions in quark matter with chiral imbalance

We study the thermodynamics of the Polyakov-Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model considering the effects of an effective chiral chemical potential. We offer a new parametrization of the Polyakov-loop potential depending on temperature and the chiral chemical potential which, when used together with a proper regularization scheme of vacuum contributions, predicts results consistent with those from lattice simulations.

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arXiv2023

Quarkyonic Mean Field Theory

We discuss mean field theory of Quarkyonic matter at zero temperature. We treat the nucleons with contact interactions in mean field approximation, discussing both vector and scalar mean field interactions. We treat the quarks without mean field vector interactions, but allow mass terms to be generated consistent from a scalar mean field consistent with the additive quark model for quark masses. Quarkyonic matter is composed of a shell of nucleons that under-occupy the total available phase space associated with the underlying quark degrees of freedom. The fully occupied Fermi sphere beneath this shell of nucleons at high densities is thought of as quarks, but when this fully occupied distribution of states first appears, although the phase space is filled, the matter is at low density. For the transition between this low density and high density saturated matter, we advocate a dual description of the fully filled Fermi sea in terms of hadrons, and make a phenomenological hypothesis for the equation of state of this matter. We then proceed to an example where the mean field interactions are all vector and only associated with the nucleons, ignoring the effects of mass change associated with the scalar interactions. Except for the effects of Pauli blocking, the nucleons and quarks do not interact. To get a reasonable transition to Quarkyonic matter the interaction of the quarks among themselves are assumed to be non-perturbative, and a simple phenomenological relation between quark Fermi energy and density is introduced.

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arXiv2022

Dynamical mass generation in Minkowski space at QCD scale

We undertake the challenging task to reveal the properties of dressed light-quarks in the space- and time-like regions. For that aim, we solved the Dyson-Schwinger equation (DSE) in Minkowski space for the quark propagator in a QCD inspired model, focusing on the realization of dynamical chiral symmetry breaking (DCSB) in the large coupling regime. The DSE is considered in the quenched approximation within the rainbow-ladder truncation with a massive gluon and a Pauli-Villars term, which is used to tune the infrared (IR) physics of the model. The solution of the DSE in Minkowski space is performed by resorting to the integral representation of the quark self-energy and propagator, which leads to a coupled set of closed self-consistent equations for the spectral densities, taking into account finite on-mass-shell renormalization. The parameters of the model are chosen such that the gluon mass scale is consistent with recent lattice QCD (LQCD) calculations, the Pauli-Villars mass is lowered down to about 1 GeV to concentrate strength in the infrared momentum region, and the coupling constant and renormalized mass are tuned to reproduce LQCD results for the quark mass function in the Landau gauge. Future application to study the pion consistently with DCSB within the Bethe-Salpeter framework with self-energies in Minkowski space is also delineated.

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arXiv2021

Quarkyonic Effective Field Theory, Quark-Nucleon Duality and Ghosts

We present a field theoretical description of quarkyonic matter consisting of quark, nucleon and ghost fields coupling to mesonic degrees of freedom. The ghosts are present to cancel over-counting of nucleon states that are Pauli blocked by the quark Fermi sea. Such a theory becomes an effective field theory of nucleons at low baryon density, and as such will reproduce nucleonic matter phenomenology. This theory can accommodate chiral symmetry restoration and the dynamical generation of a shell of nucleons at the Fermi surface. It is valid for finite temperature and density. In such a theory, quark-nucleon duality is accomplished by inclusion of ghost fields so that the nucleons extra degrees of freedom, that are beyond those of quarks, are compensated by the ghost fields.

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arXiv2021

Hot QCD at finite isospin density: confronting SU(3) Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model with recent lattice data

Extending our recently published $SU(2)$ results for zero temperature we now compute the QCD equation of state for finite isospin density within the three flavor Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model in the mean field approximation, motivated by the recently obtained Lattice QCD results for both zero and finite temperatures. Like our previous study, here also we have considered both the commonly used Traditional cutoff Regularization Scheme and the Medium Separation Scheme. Our results are compared with recent high-precision lattice simulations as well as previously obtained results in two-flavor Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model. The agreement between the lattice results and the predictions from three-flavor NJL model is very good for low values of $μ_I$ (for both zero and finite temperatures). For larger values of $μ_I$, the agreement between lattice data and the two-flavor NJL predictions is surprisingly good and better than with the three-flavor predictions.

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arXiv2020

Excluded-volume model for quarkyonic matter II: Three-flavor shell-like distribution of baryons in phase space

We extend the excluded-volume model of isospin symmetric two-flavor dense quarkyonic matter [Phys. Rev. C 101, 035201 (2020)] including strange particles and address its implications for neutron stars. The effective sizes of baryons are defined from the diverging hard-core potentials in the short interdistance regime. Around the hard-core density, the repulsive core between baryons at short distances leads to a saturation in the number density of baryons and generates perturbative quarks from the lower phase space, which leads to the shell-like distribution of baryons by the Pauli exclusion principle. The strange-quark Fermi sea always appears at high densities but the $Λ$ hyperon shell only appears when the effective size of the $Λ$ hyperon is smaller than the effective size of nucleons. We find that the pressure of strange quarkyonic matter can be large enough to support neutron stars with two times solar mass and can have a large sound speed, $c_s^2 \simeq 0.7$. The fraction of the baryon number carried by perturbative quarks is about 30% at the inner core of most massive neutron stars.

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arXiv2020

Excluded-volume model for quarkyonic Matter: Three-flavor baryon-quark Mixture

The single-flavor excluded-volume model based on the effective size of baryons reproduces the hard-soft density evolution of the equation of state (EoS) required by the recent studies of GW170817. This phenomenological model basically realizes the concept of quarkyonic matter which is introduced from large-$N_{c}$ gauge theory for dense matter. Enhanced nucleon interactions and dynamically generated quark degrees of freedom can reproduce the hard-soft evolution of the EoS. In this paper, we extend the excluded-volume model to a three-flavor system by considering electromagnetic charge and possible weak equilibrium in order to obtain a proper description for the hard-soft behavior of the EoS inferred from the gravitational waves observations.

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arXiv2019

Cold QCD at finite isospin density: confronting effective models with recent lattice data

We compute the QCD equation of state for zero temperature and finite isospin density within the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model in the mean field approximation, motivated by the recently obtained Lattice QCD results for a new class of compact stars: pion stars. We have considered both the commonly used Traditional cutoff Regularization Scheme and the Medium Separation Scheme, where in the latter purely vacuum contributions are separated in such a way that one is left with ultraviolet divergent momentum integrals depending only on vacuum quantities. We have also compared our results with the recent results from Lattice QCD and Chiral Perturbation Theory.

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arXiv2019

Minkowski-space solutions of the Schwinger-Dyson equation for the fermion propagator with the rainbow-ladder truncation

We solve the Minkowski-space Schwinger-Dyson equation (SDE) for the fermion propagator in quantum electrodynamics (QED) with massive photons. Specifically, we work in the quenched approximation within the rainbow-ladder truncation. Loop-divergences are regularized by the Pauli-Villars regularization. With moderately strong fermion-photon coupling, we find that the analytic structure of the fermion propagator consists of an on-shell pole and branch-cuts located in the timelike region. Such structures are consistent with the direct solution of the fermion propagator as functions of the complex momentum. Our method paves the way towards the calculation of the Minkowski-space Bethe-Salpeter amplitude using dressed fermion propagator.

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arXiv2019

Towards Minkowski space solutions of Dyson-Schwinger Equations through un-Wick rotation

The fermion self-energy is calculated from the rainbow-ladder truncation of the Dyson-Schwinger equation (DSE) in quantum electrodynamics (QED) for spacelike momenta and in the complex momentum plane close to the timelike region, both using Pauli-Villars regularization. Specifically, the DSE is solved in the complex momentum plane by rotating either the energy component of the four-momentum or the magnitude of Euclidean four-momentum to reach the timelike region in Minkowski space. The coupling constant is appropriately chosen to ensure the singularities of the fermion propagator are located in the timelike region while producing significant differences from the perturbative solutions. For simplicity, we choose Feynman gauge, but the method is applicable in other covariant gauges as well. We demonstrate that the approximate spectral representation based on the fermion self-energy near the timelike region is consistent with the solution of the DSE directly in the Euclidean space.

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arXiv2019

Regularization issues for a cold and dense quark matter model in $β-$equilibrium

A regularization scheme that explicitly separates vacuum contributions from medium effects is applied to a Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model with diquark interactions and in $β-$equilibrium. We perform a comparison of this proposed scheme with the more traditional one, where no separation of vacuum and medium effects is done. Our results point to both qualitative and quantitative important differences between these two methods, in special regarding the phase structure of the model in the cold and dense nuclear matter case.

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