Phases of dense matter with holographic instantons

TL;DR

This paper models nuclear and quark matter phases using holographic instantons in the Sakai-Sugimoto model, analyzing phase transitions and matter properties in a theoretical framework inspired by string theory.

Contribution

It introduces a method to include nuclear matter via instantons with dynamical properties in the holographic model, exploring phase diagrams and matter characteristics.

Findings

Identified the preferred instanton configurations and layers as functions of chemical potential.

Mapped the phase diagram of nuclear to quark matter transition in the model.

Determined conditions where nuclear matter's binding energy resembles QCD.

Abstract

We discuss nuclear matter and the transition to quark matter in the decompactified limit of the Sakai-Sugimoto model. Nuclear matter is included through instantons on the flavor branes of the model. Our approximation is based on the flat-space solution, but we allow for a dynamical instanton width and deformation and compute the energetically preferred number of instanton layers in the bulk as a function of the baryon chemical potential. We determine the regions in parameter space where the binding energy of nuclear matter is like in QCD, and compute the phase diagram in the plane of temperature and chemical potential.