Second look to the Polyakov Loop Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model at finite baryonic density

TL;DR

This paper revisits the Polyakov Loop Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model at finite baryonic density, focusing on the deconfinement potential's form and developing a more accurate formulation for astrophysical applications like neutron star interiors.

Contribution

It introduces a generalized formulation of the model that corrects the spurious effects of baryonic charge assignment to gluons and aligns with perturbative QCD results.

Findings

Revised deconfinement potential at finite density

Cures for spurious baryonic charge effects

Alignment with perturbative QCD asymptotics

Abstract

We revisit the Polyakov Loop coupled Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model that maintains the Polyakov loop dynamics in the limit of zero temperature. This is of interest for astrophysical applications in the interior of neutron stars. For this purpose we re-examine the form of the potential for the deconfinement order parameter at finite baryonic densities. Since the modification of this potential at any temperature is formally equivalent to assigning a baryonic charge to gluons, we develop a more general formulation of the present model that cures this spurious effect and is normalized to match the asymptotic behaviour of the QCD equation of state given by $\mathcal{O}(\alpha_s^2)$ and partial $\mathcal{O}(\alpha_s^3\ln^2\alpha_s)$ perturbative results.