Topological confinement of vortices in two-flavor dense QCD

We find a novel confinement mechanism in the two-flavor dense quark matter proposed recently, that consists of the 2SC condensates and the P-wave diquark condensates of d-quarks. This quark matter exhibiting color superconductivity as well as superfluidity is classified into two phases; confined and deconfined phases of vortices. We establish that the criterion of the confinement is color neutrality of Aharonov-Bohm (AB) phases: vortices exhibiting color non-singlet AB phases are confined by the so-called AB defects to form color-singlet bound states. In the deconfined phase, the most stable vortices are non-Abelian Alice strings, which are superfluid vortices with fractional circulation and non-Abelian color magnetic fluxes therein, exhibiting color non-singlet AB phases. On the other hand, in the confined phase, these non-Abelian vortices are confined to either a baryonic or mesonic bound state in which constituent vortices are connected by AB defects. The baryonic bound state consists of three non-Abelian Alice strings with different color magnetic fluxes with the total flux canceled out connected by a domain wall junction, while the mesonic bound state consists of two non-Abelian Alice strings with the same color magnetic fluxes connected by a single domain wall. Interestingly, the latter contains a color magnetic flux in its core, but this can exist because of color neutrality of its AB phase.

Transport Properties in Magnetized Compact Stars

Transport properties of dense quark matter are discussed in the strong magnetic field, B. B dependence as well as density dependence of the Hall conductivity is discussed, based on the microscopic Kubo formula. We took into account the possibility of the inhomogeneous chiral phase at moderate densities, where anomalous Hall effect is intrinsic and resembles the one in Weyl semimetals in condensed matter physics. Some theoretical aspects inherent in anomalous Hall effect are also discussed.

Electrical neutrality and $$\beta $$-equilibrium conditions in dense quark matter: generation of charged pion condensation by chiral imbalance

The phase diagram of dense quark matter with chiral imbalance is considered with the conditions of electric neutrality and $$\beta $$ β -equilibrium. It has been shown recently that chiral imbalance can generate charged pion condensation (PC) in dense quark matter. It was, therefore, interesting to verify that this phenomenon takes place in realistic physical scenarios such as electrically neutral quark matter in $$\beta $$ β -equilibrium, because a window of charged PC at dense quark matter phase diagram (without chiral imbalance) predicted earlier was closed by the consideration of these conditions at the physical current quark mass. In this paper it has been shown that the charged PC phenomenon is generated by chiral imbalance in the dense electric neutral quark/baryonic matter in $$\beta $$ β -equilibrium, i.e. matter in neutron stars. It has also been demonstrated that charged PC is an inevitable phenomenon in dense quark matter with chiral imbalance if there is nonzero chiral imbalance in two forms, chiral and chiral isospin one. It seems that in this case charged PC phase can be hardly avoided by any physical constraint on isospin imbalance and that this conclusion can be probably generalized from neutron star matter to the matter produced in heavy ion collisions or in neutron star mergers. The chiral limit and the physical point (physical pion mass) have both been considered and it was shown that the appearance of charged PC is not much affected by the consideration of nonzero current quark mass.

Chiral condensate of cold dense quark matter with external magnetic field

At zero temperature and finite chemical potential, the gap equation of cold dense quark matter under external magnetic field is studied with NJL model in the mean-field approximation. By introducing new methods, it is found that the Nambu phase has sophisticated structures which have not been studied before. As a consequence, the phase diagram is expanded and divided into five areas, in each area the condensate has unique behaviors with chemical potential varying. Furthermore, the expanded phase diagram is used to predict the order of phase transition between the Nambu phase and the Wigner phase, it can also be used to explain the relations of dynamical mass and chemical potential. Meanwhile, the metastable states and cascade effect of dynamical mass are studied in this paper.