1,779 research outputs found
Axial anomaly and magnetism of nuclear and quark matter
We consider the response of the QCD ground state at finite baryon density to
a strong magnetic field B. We point out the dominant role played by the
coupling of neutral Goldstone bosons, such as pi^0, to the magnetic field via
the axial triangle anomaly. We show that, in vacuum, above a value of B ~
m_pi^2/e, a metastable object appears - the pi^0 domain wall. Because of the
axial anomaly, the wall carries a baryon number surface density proportional to
B. As a result, for B ~ 10^{19} G a stack of parallel pi^0 domain walls is
energetically more favorable than nuclear matter at the same density.
Similarly, at higher densities, somewhat weaker magnetic fields of order B ~
10^{17}-10^{18} G transform the color-superconducting ground state of QCD into
new phases containing stacks of axial isoscalar (eta or eta') domain walls. We
also show that a quark-matter state known as ``Goldstone current state,'' in
which a gradient of a Goldstone field is spontaneously generated, is
ferromagnetic due to the axial anomaly. We estimate the size of the fields
created by such a state in a typical neutron star to be of order
10^{14}-10^{15} G.Comment: 18 pages, v2: added a discussion of the energy cost of neutralizing
the domain wall charg
Illuminating Dense Quark Matter
We imagine shining light on a lump of cold dense quark matter, in the CFL
phase and therefore a transparent insulator. We calculate the angles of
reflection and refraction, and the intensity of the reflected and refracted
light. Although the only potentially observable context for this phenomenon
(reflection of light from and refraction of light through an illuminated quark
star) is unlikely to be realized, our calculation casts new light on the old
idea that confinement makes the QCD vacuum behave as if filled with a
condensate of color-magnetic monopoles.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur
Massive quark effects in two flavor color superconductors
The high density effective theory formalism (HDET) is employed to describe
high density QCD with two massive flavors (2SC). The gap equation is derived
and explicitly solved for the gap parameter. The parameters associated to the
pseudo Nambu-Goldstone boson of are evaluated in the limit
and fixed. In particular we find for the velocity of the
NG boson the relation
.Comment: Latex file. 14 pages, 2 figures. Some improvement in the
presentation. 2 references added. Final version to be published in Physics
Letter
Charged and superconducting vortices in dense quark matter
Quark matter at astrophysical densities may contain stable vortices due to
the spontaneous breaking of hypercharge symmetry by kaon condensation. We argue
that these vortices could be both charged and electrically superconducting.
Current carrying loops (vortons) could be long lived and play a role in the
magnetic and transport properties of this matter. We provide a scenario for
vorton formation in protoneutron stars.Comment: Replaced with the published version. A typographical error in Eq. 2
is correcte
Color-flavor locked strange matter
We analyze how the CFL states in dense matter work in the direction of
enhancing the parameter space for absolutely stable phases (strange matter). We
find that the "CFL strange matter" phase can be the true ground state of
hadronic matter for a much wider range of the parameters of the model (the gap
of the QCD Cooper pairs , the strange quark mass and the Bag
Constant ) than the state without any pairing, and derive a full equation of
state and an accurate analytic approximation to the lowest order in
and which may be directly used for applications. The effects of pairing
on the equation of state are found to be small (as previously expected) but not
negligible and may be relevant for astrophysics.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure
Bulk viscosity in 2SC quark matter
The bulk viscosity of three-flavor color-superconducting quark matter
originating from the nonleptonic process u+s u+d is computed. It is assumed
that up and down quarks form Cooper pairs while the strange quark remains
unpaired (2SC phase). A general derivation of the rate of strangeness
production is presented, involving contributions from a multitude of different
subprocesses, including subprocesses that involve different numbers of gapped
quarks as well as creation and annihilation of particles in the condensate. The
rate is then used to compute the bulk viscosity as a function of the
temperature, for an external oscillation frequency typical of a compact star
r-mode. We find that, for temperatures far below the critical temperature T_c
for 2SC pairing, the bulk viscosity of color-superconducting quark matter is
suppressed relative to that of unpaired quark matter, but for T >~ 10^(-3) T_c
the color-superconducting quark matter has a higher bulk viscosity. This is
potentially relevant for the suppression of r-mode instabilities early in the
life of a compact star.Comment: 18 pages + appendices (28 pages total), 8 figures; v3: corrected
numerical error in the plots; 2SC bulk viscosity is now larger than unpaired
bulk viscosity in a wider temperature rang
Non-Abelian discrete gauge symmetries in 4d string models
We study the realization of non-Abelian discrete gauge symmetries in 4d field
theory and string theory compactifications. The underlying structure
generalizes the Abelian case, and follows from the interplay between gaugings
of non-Abelian isometries of the scalar manifold and field identifications
making axion-like fields periodic. We present several classes of string
constructions realizing non-Abelian discrete gauge symmetries. In particular,
compactifications with torsion homology classes, where non-Abelianity arises
microscopically from the Hanany-Witten effect, or compactifications with
non-Abelian discrete isometry groups, like twisted tori. We finally focus on
the more interesting case of magnetized branes in toroidal compactifications
and quotients thereof (and their heterotic and intersecting duals), in which
the non-Abelian discrete gauge symmetries imply powerful selection rules for
Yukawa couplings of charged matter fields. In particular, in MSSM-like models
they correspond to discrete flavour symmetries constraining the quark and
lepton mass matrices, as we show in specific examples.Comment: 58 pages; minor typos corrected and references adde
On Color Superconductivity in External Magnetic Field
We study color superconductivity in external magnetic field. We discuss the
reason why the mixing angles in color-flavor locked (CFL) and two-flavor
superconductivity (2SC) phases are different despite the fact that the CFL gap
goes to the 2SC gap for . Although flavor symmetry is
explicitly broken in external magnetic field, we show that all values of gaps
in their coset spaces of possible solutions in the CFL phase are equivalent in
external magnetic field.Comment: 12 pages, LaTe
Critical temperature for kaon condensation in color-flavor locked quark matter
We study the behavior of Goldstone bosons in color-flavor-locked (CFL) quark
matter at nonzero temperature. Chiral symmetry breaking in this phase of cold
and dense matter gives rise to pseudo-Goldstone bosons, the lightest of these
being the charged and neutral kaons K^+ and K^0. At zero temperature,
Bose-Einstein condensation of the kaons occurs. Since all fermions are gapped,
this kaon condensed CFL phase can, for energies below the fermionic energy gap,
be described by an effective theory for the bosonic modes. We use this
effective theory to investigate the melting of the condensate: we determine the
temperature-dependent kaon masses self-consistently using the two-particle
irreducible effective action, and we compute the transition temperature for
Bose-Einstein condensation. Our results are important for studies of transport
properties of the kaon condensed CFL phase, such as bulk viscosity.Comment: 24 pages, 8 figures, v2: new section about effect of electric
neutrality on critical temperature added; references added; version to appear
in J.Phys.
Improved staggered quark actions with reduced flavour symmetry violations for lattice QCD
We introduce a new class of actions for staggered quarks in lattice QCD which
significantly reduce flavour symmetry violations in the pion mass spectrum. An
action introduced by the MILC collaboration for the same purpose is seen to be
a special case. We discus how such actions arise from a systematic attempt to
reduce flavour symmetry violations in the weak coupling limit. It is shown that
for quenched lattice QCD at 6/g^2=5.7, representative actions of this class
give a considerable reduction in flavour symmetry violation over the standard
staggered action, and a significant reduction over what is achieved by the MILC
action.Comment: RevTeX 18 pages with 3 postscript figure
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