Phase Structure of Color Superconductivity

We investigate color superconductivity and chiral symmetry restoration at finite temperature and baryon density in the frame of standard two flavor Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model. We derive the diquark mass in RPA, discuss its constraint on the coupling constant in the diquark channel, and find a strong competition between the two phase transitions when the coupling constant is large enough.Comment: Talk presented at Conference on Non-Perturbative Quantum Field Theory: Lattice and Beyond, Guangzhou, China, Dec.16--18, 200

Phase structure of self-gravitating systems

The equilibrium properties of classical self-gravitating systems in the grand canonical ensemble are studied by using the correspondence with an euclidean field theory with infrared and ultraviolet cutoffs. It is shown that the system developes a first order phase transition between a low and a high density regime. In addition, due to the long range of the gravitational potential, the system is close to criticality within each phase, with the exponents of mean field theory. The coexistence of a sharp first order transition and critical behavior can explain both the presence of voids in large regions of the universe as well as the self-similar density correlations in terms of self-gravity alone.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure. Some comments and references added. Version which appear in the journa

Phase Structure of QED3 at Finite Temperature

Dynamical symmetry breaking in three-dimensional QED with N fermion flavours is considered at finite temperature, in the large $N$ approximation. Using an approximate treatment of the Schwinger-Dyson equation for the fermion self-energy, we find that chiral symmetry is restored above a certain critical temperature which depends itself on $N$. We find that the ratio of the zero-momentum zero-temperature fermion mass to the critical temperature has a large value compared with four-fermion theories, as had been suggested in a previous work with a momentum-independent self-energy. Evidence of a temperature- dependent critical $N$ is shown to appear in this approximation. The phase diagram for spontaneous mass generation in the theory is presented in $T-N$ space.Comment: 9 page

Phase Structure of Higher Spin Black Holes

We revisit the study of the phase structure of higher spin black holes carried out in arXiv$:1210.0284$ using the "canonical formalism". In particular we study the low as well as high temperature regimes. We show that the Hawking-Page transition takes place in the low temperature regime. The thermodynamically favoured phase changes from conical surplus to black holes and then again to conical surplus as we increase temperature. We then show that in the high temperature regime the diagonal embedding gives the appropriate description. We also give a map between the parameters of the theory near the IR and UV fixed points. This makes the "good" solutions near one end map to the "bad" solutions near the other end and vice versa.Comment: References added, Conclusions written in better manner, overall exposition improved, version accepted in JHE

Phase Structure and Compactness

In order to study the influence of compactness on low-energy properties, we compare the phase structures of the compact and non-compact two-dimensional multi-frequency sine-Gordon models. It is shown that the high-energy scaling of the compact and non-compact models coincides, but their low-energy behaviors differ. The critical frequency $\beta^2 = 8\pi$ at which the sine-Gordon model undergoes a topological phase transition is found to be unaffected by the compactness of the field since it is determined by high-energy scaling laws. However, the compact two-frequency sine-Gordon model has first and second order phase transitions determined by the low-energy scaling: we show that these are absent in the non-compact model.Comment: 21 pages, 5 figures, minor changes, final version, accepted for publication in JHE