Inhomogeneous phases in the quark-meson model with explicit chiral-symmetry breaking

TL;DR

This paper explores the presence of inhomogeneous chiral phases in the quark-meson model, showing they persist at physical pion masses and are linked to scalar channel instabilities.

Contribution

It demonstrates the survival of inhomogeneous phases at physical pion masses within the quark-meson model, highlighting the scalar channel as the key instability.

Findings

Inhomogeneous phases shrink with increasing pion mass.

Inhomogeneous phases exist at the physical pion mass.

Instability occurs in the scalar channel, not pseudoscalar.

Abstract

We investigate the existence of inhomogeneous chiral phases in the quark-meson model with explicit chiral-symmetry breaking. We find that the inhomogeneous region shrinks with increasing pion masses but survives for the physical value of m_pi. The instability towards inhomogeneous matter occurs in the scalar channel, while pseudoscalar modes are disfavored.