High Density QCD and Instantons

TL;DR

This paper systematically studies how instantons influence non-perturbative quark interactions, leading to phenomena like chiral symmetry breaking and color superconductivity, with detailed analysis for two and three flavor quark matter.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive treatment of color superconductivity within the instanton model, including improved calculations of the gap and analysis of phase transitions.

Findings

Instantons induce strong non-perturbative interactions between quarks.

Color-flavor locking occurs in three-flavor quark matter at high density.

Instanton-anti-instanton molecules may compete with superconductivity in chiral restoration.

Abstract

Instantons generate strong non-perturbative interactions between quarks. In the vacuum, these interactions lead to chiral symmetry breaking and generate constituent quark masses on the order of 300-400 MeV. The observation that the same forces also provide attraction in the scalar diquark channel leads to the prediction that cold quark matter is a color superconductor, with gaps as large as $\sim$~100 MeV. We provide a systematic treatment of color superconductivity in the instanton model. We show that the structure of the superconductor depends on the number of flavors. In the case of two flavors, we verify the standard scenario and provide an improved calculation of the mass gap. For three flavors, we show that the ground state is color-flavor locked and calculate the chiral condensate in the high density phase. We show that as a function of the strange quark mass, there is a sharp transition between the two phases. Finally, we go beyond the mean field approximation and investigate the role of instanton-anti-instanton molecules, which -- besides superconducting gap formation -- provide a competitive mechanism for chiral restoration at finite density.