Meissner masses in the gCFL phase of QCD

We calculate the Meissner masses of gluons in neutral three-flavor color superconducting matter for finite strange quark mass. In the CFL phase the eissner masses are slowly varying function of the strange quark mass. For large strange quark mass, in the so called gCFL phase, the Meissner masses of gluons with colors $a=1,2,3$ and 8 become imaginary, indicating an instability.Comment: New Fig. 1 shows that also the masses of the gluons 3 and 8 are imaginar

The Crystallography of Strange Quark Matter

Cold three-flavor quark matter at large (but not asymptotically large) densities may exist as a crystalline color superconductor. We explore this possibility by calculating the gap parameter Delta and free energy Omega(Delta) for possible crystal structures within a Ginzburg-Landau approximation, evaluating Omega(Delta) to order Delta^6. We develop a qualitative understanding of what makes a crystal structure stable, and find two structures with particularly large values of Delta and the condensation energy, within a factor of two of those for the CFL phase known to characterize QCD at asymptotically large densities. The robustness of these phases results in their being favored over wide ranges of density and though it also implies that the Ginzburg-Landau approximation is not quantitatively reliable, previous work suggests that it can be trusted for qualitative comparisons between crystal structures. We close with a look ahead at the calculations that remain to be done in order to make contact with observed pulsar glitches and neutron star cooling.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures. Contribution to the proceedings of Strangeness in Quark Matter 2006, UCLA. Talk given by Rishi Sharm

Influence of finite quark chemical potentials on the three flavor LOFF phase of QCD

We study in the Ginzburg-Landau approximation, the Larkin-Ovchinnikov-Fulde-Ferrell (LOFF) phase of QCD with three flavors and one plane wave, including terms of order O(1/mu). We show that the LOFF window is slightly enlarged, and actually splits into two different regions, one characterized by u-s and d-u pairings and the other with d-u pairs only.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure

Gapless phases of color-superconducting matter

We discuss gapless color superconductivity for neutral quark matter in beta equilibrium at zero as well as at nonzero temperature. Basic properties of gapless superconductors are reviewed. The current progress and the remaining problems in the understanding of the phase diagram of strange quark matter are discussed.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures. Plenary talk at Strangeness in Quark Matter 2004 (SQM2004), Cape Town, South Africa, 15-20 September 2004. Minor correction

Photons in gapless color-flavor-locked quark matter

We calculate the Debye and Meissner masses of a gauge boson in a material consisting of two species of massless fermions that form a condensate of Cooper pairs. We perform the calculation as a function of temperature, for the cases of neutral Cooper pairs and charged Cooper pairs, and for a range of parameters including gapped quaisparticles, and ungapped quasiparticles with both quadratic and linear dispersion relations at low energy. Our results are relevant to the behavior of photons and gluons in the gapless color-flavor-locked phase of quark matter. We find that the photon's Meissner mass vanishes, and the Debye mass shows a non-monotonic temperature dependence, and at temperatures of order the pairing gap it drops to a minimum value of order sqrt(alpha) times the quark chemical potential. We confirm previous claims that at zero temperature an imaginary Meissner mass can arise from a charged gapless condensate, and we find that at finite temperature this can also occur for a gapped condensate.Comment: 22 pages, LaTeX; expanded discussion of temperature dependenc

Erratum to: "Quasi-particle specific heats for the crystalline color superconducting phase of QCD". [Phys. Lett. B 575 (2003) 181]

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