Overview of Crystalline Color Superconductors

TL;DR

This paper reviews crystalline color superconductors, a phase in cold quark matter where inhomogeneous, crystal-like structures form due to stress-induced symmetry breaking, with implications for understanding exotic states of matter.

Contribution

It provides a concise overview of crystalline color superconductors, highlighting their formation in cold quark matter with mismatched Fermi surfaces and their relation to symmetry breaking.

Findings

Crystalline color superconductors arise in cold quark matter.

They involve inhomogeneous phases breaking rotational symmetry.

These phases are analogous to crystal structures in condensed matter.

Abstract

Inhomogeneous phases may appear when a stress is applied to a system and the system can minimize the free energy breaking the rotational invariance. Various examples are known in Nature of this sort, as the paramagnetic to ferromagnetic phase transition, or the fluid/solid phase transition. If the rotational symmetry is broken down to a discrete symmetry, the system is typically named a crystal. We breifly review crystalline color superconductors, which arise in cold quark matter with mismatched Fermi spheres.