Instabilities of Non-Abelian Vortices in Dense QCD

TL;DR

This paper develops an effective theory for non-Abelian vortices in dense QCD, revealing their instability due to flavor symmetry breaking and estimating their lifetimes, with implications for magnetic monopoles at high density.

Contribution

It introduces a low-energy effective theory for non-Abelian vortices in dense QCD and analyzes their stability, highlighting the decay mechanism caused by flavor symmetry breaking.

Findings

All vortices are unstable against decay into a single vortex type.

Explicit flavor symmetry breaking induces a potential causing vortex instability.

Estimated lifetime of unstable vortices using weak-coupling calculations.

Abstract

We construct a low-energy effective theory describing non-Abelian vortices in the color superconducting quark matter under stress. We demonstrate that all the vortices are radically unstable against decay into the only one type of vortices due to the potential term induced by the explicit flavor symmetry breaking by the strange quark mass. A simple analytical estimate for the lifetime of unstable vortices is provided under the controlled weak-coupling calculations. We briefly discuss the (non)existence of magnetic monopoles at high density.