# Two-colour QCD at finite density with two flavours of staggered quarks

## TL;DR

This paper investigates two-color QCD with staggered quarks at finite density, focusing on lattice artifacts, condensate behavior, and discretization effects, providing insights into the continuum limit and effective field theory comparisons.

## Contribution

It analyzes the effects of lattice artifacts on condensates and compares staggered and Wilson fermions, offering new understanding of discretization impacts in finite density QCD simulations.

## Key findings

- Diquark condensate aligns with effective field theory predictions outside the bulk phase.
- Quark condensate requires chemical potential-dependent additive renormalization on finer lattices.
- Qualitative differences between staggered and Wilson fermions are observed below half-filling.

## Abstract

In this contribution we revisit simulations of two-color QCD with rooted staggered quarks at finite density, where baryon-number spontaneously breaks and a diquark condensate forms. We thereby pay special attention to simulating outside the lattice-artifact bulk phase, in which $Z_2$ monopoles condense, and investigate some of the consequences of this, e.g. on the chiral and the diquark condensate which were known to be well described by chiral effective field theory. Not surprisingly, on finer lattices outside the bulk phase the quark condensate now requires additive renormalization before it can be compared with effective field theory predictions. The subtraction must necessarily depend on the chemical potential, however. The diquark condensate is not affected by this problem and remains in good agreement with these predictions. We also compare staggered with Wilson quarks to demonstrate that the two fermion discretizations yield qualitatively different results well below half-filling already. We close with prelimiary results for the Goldstone spectrum to demonstrate that the continuum pattern is recovered also with staggered quarks outside the bulk phase.