Quark-hadron continuity under rotation: Vortex continuity or boojum?

TL;DR

This paper investigates the continuity between hadronic and quark matter under rotation, revealing that vortex connections involve complex boojum structures rather than simple one-to-one vortex correspondences, supported by both macroscopic and microscopic theories.

Contribution

It demonstrates that hadronic and quark vortices form a boojum structure with canceled color fluxes, challenging previous simpler vortex connection proposals.

Findings

Vortex connections involve three hadronic and three non-Abelian vortices.

Boojum structures ensure total color flux cancellation.

The results are supported by Ginzburg-Landau and microscopic analyses.

Abstract

Quark-hadron continuity was proposed as crossover between hadronic matter and quark matter without a phase transition, based on the matching of the symmetry and excitations in both phases. In the limit of a light strange-quark mass, it connects hyperon matter and the color-flavor-locked (CFL) phase exhibiting color superconductivity. Recently, it was proposed that this conjecture could be generalized in the presence of superfluid vortices penetrating both phases (arXiv:1803.05115 [hep-ph]), and it was suggested that one hadronic superfluid vortex in hyperon matter could be connected to one non-Abelian vortex (color magnetic flux tube) in the CFL phase. Here, we argue that their proposal is consistent only at large distances; instead, we show that three hadronic superfluid vortices must combine with three non-Abelian vortices with different colors with the total color magnetic fluxes canceled out, where the junction is called a colorful boojum. We rigorously prove this in both a macroscopic theory based on the Ginzburg-Landau description in which symmetry and excitations match (including vortex cores), and a microscopic theory in which the Aharonov-Bohm phases of quarks around vortices match.