The Quark Structure of the Nucleon and Moat Regimes in Nuclear Matter

2025/08/12 by Theo F. Motta, Motta, Theo F., G. Krein +1 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Nuclear Theory (nucl-th) #Nuclear physics research studies #Quantum, superfluid, helium dynamics

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2508.09287

openalex publication_date 2025/08/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/16 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

We employ a model of nuclear structure that takes into account the quark substructure of the baryons to understand the behavior of static two-point correlation functions of meson fields in dense nuclear matter. We show that these correlation functions display ``moat'' regimes, where the inverse static correlation function is nonmonotonic in momentum space. This can have interesting consequences for the nature of nuclear matter, and it strengthens the possibility of a liquid-crystal phase for high densities.

Citations

• Moat hyperons in cold neutron stars
• Moat regimes within a 2+1 flavor Polyakov-quark-meson model
• The QCD moat regime and its real-time properties
• Phase structure of quark matter and in-medium properties of mesons from Callan-Symanzik flows
• New Tool to Detect Inhomogeneous Chiral Symmetry Breaking
• Inhomogenuous instabilities at large chemical potential in a rainbow-ladder QCD model
• Inhomogeneous phases in the 3+1-dimensional Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model and their dependence on the regularization scheme
• Moat Regimes in QCD and their Signatures in Heavy-Ion Collisions
• Inhomogeneous chiral condensates
• Recent Progress in Quantum Hadrodynamics

Cited by

• Dissecting the moat regime at low energies I: Renormalization and the phase structure

Related

• Quark Correlations in Nucleons and Nuclei
• A quark-meson coupling model with short-range quark-quark correlations
• Dissecting the moat regime at low energies I: Renormalization and the phase structure
• Probing nuclear liquid-gas phase transition with isospin correlations
• Moat Regimes in QCD and their Signatures in Heavy-Ion Collisions