Inhomogeneous phases at finite density in an external magnetic field

TL;DR

This paper investigates the phase structure of inhomogeneous chiral condensates in a two-flavor quark-meson model under finite density and magnetic field, revealing complex phase behavior.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of inhomogeneous phases at finite density and magnetic field using a low-energy QCD effective model with regularization and physical parameter matching.

Findings

Rich phase structure observed in the model.

Inhomogeneous phases are favored at certain densities and magnetic fields.

The model's parameters are calibrated to physical meson and quark masses.

Abstract

The two-flavor quark-meson model is used as a low-energy effective model for QCD to study inhomogeneous chiral condensates at finite quark chemical potential $\mu$ in a constant magnetic background $B$. We determine the parameters of the model by matching the meson and quark masses, and the pion decay constant to their physical values using the on-shell and modified minimal subtraction schemes. We calculate the free energy in the mean-field approximation for a chiral density wave using dimensional regularization. The system has a surprisingly rich phase structure.