Non-uniform phases in a three-flavour 't Hooft extended Nambu-Jona--Lasinio model

TL;DR

This paper investigates the emergence of non-uniform phases in cold dense three-flavor quark matter using an extended Nambu-Jona--Lasinio model with 't Hooft determinant, highlighting the role of the strange sector in promoting these phases.

Contribution

It introduces an analysis of non-uniform phases in a three-flavor quark matter model including flavor-mixing effects, extending previous studies to include the strange quark sector.

Findings

Strange sector inclusion promotes non-uniform phases.

Non-uniform phases appear over a wider domain with flavor-mixing.

Coupling strength variations affect phase stability.

Abstract

The possible existence of non-uniform phases in cold dense quark matter in the light quark sector ($u$, $d$ and $s$) is addressed using the Nambu-Jona--Lasinio Model extended to include flavour-mixing 't Hooft determinant. The effect of changes in the coupling strengths of the model is discussed. It is seen that the inclusion of the strange sector catalyses the appearance of these non-uniform phases extending the domain for their appearance.