# Dualities and inhomogeneous phases in dense quark matter with chiral and isospin imbalances in framework of effective model

## TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that a key duality in dense quark matter phase structure persists even when considering spatially inhomogeneous condensates, revealing a rich phase diagram with various inhomogeneous phases.

## Contribution

It shows that the main duality between chiral symmetry breaking and pion condensation remains valid in inhomogeneous phases, extending previous homogeneous case results.

## Key findings

- Duality persists in inhomogeneous phases
- Full phase diagram of inhomogeneous dense quark matter constructed
- Dual transformation predicts the phase diagram without additional calculations

## Abstract

It has been shown in [32,33] in the framework of Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model with the assumption of spatially homogeneous condensates that in the large-$N_{c}$ limit ($N_{c}$ is the number of quark colours) there exist three dual symmetries of the thermodynamic potential, which describes dense quark matter with chiral and isospin imbalances. The main duality is between the chiral symmetry breaking and the charged pion condensation phenomena. There have been a lot of studies and hints that the ground state could be characterized by spatially inhomogeneous condensates, so the question arises if duality is a rather deep property of the phase structure or just accidental property in the homogeneous case. In this paper we have shown that even if the phase diagram contains phases with spatially inhomogeneous condensates, it still possesses the property of this main duality. Two other dual symmetries are not realized in the theory if it is investigated within an inhomogeneous approach to a ground state. From various earlier studied aspects of QCD phase diagram of isospin asymmetric matter with possible inhomogeneous condensates, in the present paper the unified picture and full phase diagram of isospin imbalanced dense quark matter have been assembled. Acting on this diagram by a dual transformation, we obtained, in the framework of an approach with spatially inhomogeneous condensates and without any calculations, a full phase diagram of chirally asymmetric dense medium. This example shows that the duality is not just entertaining mathematical property but an instrument with very high predictivity power. The obtained phase diagram is quite rich and contains various spatially inhomogeneous phases.