Color superconductivity and chiral symmetry restoration at non-zero baryon density and temperature

Abstract

We explore the phase diagram of strongly interacting matter as a function of temperature and baryon number density, using a class of models for two-flavor QCD in which the interaction between quarks is modelled by that induced by instantons. Our treatment allows us to investigate the possible simultaneous formation of condensates in the conventional quark-anti-quark channel (breaking chiral symmetry) and in a quark-quark channel leading to color superconductivity: the spontaneous breaking of color symmetry via the formation of quark Cooper pairs. At low temperatures, chiral symmetry restoration occurs via a first-order transition between a phase with low (or zero) baryon density and a high density color superconducting phase. We find color superconductivity in the high density phase for temperatures less than of order tens to 100 MeV, and find coexisting 〈qq〉 and 〈qq〉 condensates in this phase in the presence of a current quark mass. At high temperatures, the chiral phase transition is second order in the chiral limit and is a smooth crossover for non-zero current quark mass. A tricritical point separates the first-order transition at high densities from the second-order transition at high temperatures. In the presence of a current quark mass this tricritical point becomes a second-order phase transition with Ising model exponents, suggesting that a long correlation length may develop in heavy ion collisions in which the phase transition is traversed at the appropriate density.