Abstract
Chiral perturbation theory predicts the chiral anomaly to induce a so-called Chiral Soliton Lattice at sufficiently large magnetic fields and baryon chemical potentials. This state breaks translational invariance in the direction of the magnetic field and was shown to be unstable with respect to charged pion condensation. Improving on previous work by considering a realistic pion mass, we employ methods from type-II superconductivity and construct a three-dimensional pion (and baryon) crystal perturbatively, close to the instability curve of the Chiral Soliton Lattice. We find an analogue of the usual type-I/type-II transition in superconductivity: along the instability curve for magnetic fields eB > 0.12 GeV2 and chemical potentials μ < 910 MeV, this crystal can continuously supersede the Chiral Soliton Lattice. For smaller magnetic fields the instability curve must be preceded by a discontinuous transition.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Tomáš Brauner for useful discussions and comments. G.W.E. is supported by the National Science and Technology Council (Taiwan) under Grant No. MOST 110-2112-M-001-070-MY3. G.W.E. also acknowledges support by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) through the CRC-TR 211 ‘Strong-interaction matter under extreme conditions’– project number 315477589 — TRR 211, and would like to thank Prof. Dirk Rischke and Goethe University Frankfurt’s High Energy Physics group for their warm welcome and hospitality during their research visit.
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Evans, G.W., Schmitt, A. Chiral Soliton Lattice turns into 3D crystal. J. High Energ. Phys. 2024, 41 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP02(2024)041
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP02(2024)041