2000/11/30 by Dirk H. Rischke, D. H. Rischke, D. Son +3 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions #hep-ph #nucl-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.87.062001
published as Phys.Rev.Lett. 87 (2001) 062001 · 4 pages; restructured, published version
openalex publication_date 2001/07/19 · arxiv created 2001/07/28 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We discuss QCD with two light flavors at large baryon chemical potential \ensuremathμ. Color superconductivity leads to partial breaking of the color SU(3) group. We show that the infrared physics is governed by the gluodynamics of the remaining SU(2) group with an exponentially soft confinement scale \ensuremathΛQCD^\ensuremath'\ensuremath∼\ensuremathΔexp[\ensuremath-a\ensuremathμ/(g\ensuremathΔ)], where \ensuremathΔ\ensuremath≪\ensuremathμ is the superconducting gap, g is the strong coupling, and a\phantom\rule0ex0ex=\phantom\rule0ex0ex2√(2)\ensuremathπ/11. We estimate that, at moderate baryon densities, \ensuremathΛQCD^\ensuremath' is O(10 MeV) or smaller. The confinement radius increases exponentially with density, leading to ``asymptotic deconfinement.'' The velocity of the SU(2) gluons is small due to the large dielectric constant of the medium.