English

How many phases meet at the chiral critical point?

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2010-04-23 v2 Nuclear Theory

Abstract

We explore the phase diagram of NJL-type models near the chiral critical point allowing for phases with spatially inhomogeneous chiral condensates. In the chiral limit it turns out that the region in the mean-field phase diagram where those phases are energetically preferred very generically reaches out to the chiral critical point. The preferred inhomogeneous ground state in this vicinity possibly resembles a lattice of domain wall solitons. This raises the question of their relevance for the phase diagram of QCD.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0902.1778,
  title  = {How many phases meet at the chiral critical point?},
  author = {Dominik Nickel},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0902.1778},
  year   = {2010}
}

Comments

7 pages, 1 figure; v2: minor corrections, as published in PRL

R2 v1 2026-06-21T12:09:59.214Z