The Color-Flavor Locking Phase at T \not =0$

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the color-flavor locked phase of QCD at high density and small non-zero temperature, deriving exact temperature dependence of condensates and pressure, and proposing a phase structure with two superconducting phases.

Contribution

It introduces an effective action approach to precisely determine the temperature dependence of condensates and pressure in the color-flavor locked phase of QCD.

Findings

Exact T^2 behavior of condensates and pressure derived

Phase structure likely includes two superconducting phases and a symmetric phase

Residual Z_2 invariance is preserved in the effective description

Abstract

We study the color-flavor locked phase of QCD with three massless quarks at high chemical potential and small non zero temperatures. We make use of the recently introduced effective action to describe such a phase. We obtain the exact order T^2 behaviour of the condensates and of the pressure by formally comparing the derivative from the QCD functional with symmetry breaking to that from the effective lagrangian with external sources, respecting the residual Z_2 invariance of the color-flavor locked phase. From these exact results, but now at a very tentative level of conjecture, we are lead to think that the phase structure of QCD at very high density consists of two superconducting phases and a symmetric one.