English

Patterns of Symmetry Breaking in QCD at High Baryon Density

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2009-10-31 v3 Nuclear Theory

Abstract

We study the structure of QCD at very large baryon density for an arbitrary number of flavors NfN_f. We provide evidence that for any number of flavors larger than Nf=2N_f=2 chiral symmetry remains broken at asymptotically large chemical potential. For Nc=Nf=3N_c=N_f=3, chiral symmetry breaking follows the standard pattern SU(3)L×SU(3)RSU(3)SU(3)_L\times SU(3)_R\to SU(3), but for Nf>3N_f>3 unusual patterns emerge. We study the case Nf=3N_f=3 in more detail and calculate the magnitude of the chiral order parameters <ψˉψ><\bar\psi\psi> and <(ψˉψ)2><(\bar\psi\psi)^2> in perturbative QCD. We show that, asymptotically, <ψˉψ>1/3<\bar\psi\psi>^{1/3} is much smaller than <(ψˉψ)2>1/6<(\bar\psi\psi)^2>^{1/6}. The result can be understood in terms of an approximate discrete symmetry.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.hep-ph/9909574,
  title  = {Patterns of Symmetry Breaking in QCD at High Baryon Density},
  author = {Thomas Schaefer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-ph/9909574},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

23 pages, revtex, erratum added