2023/11/07 by Geraint W. Evans, Andreas Schmitt, Evans, Geraint W. +1 · 5 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #Nuclear Theory (nucl-th) #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions #Quantum, superfluid, helium dynamics
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2311.03880
openalex publication_date 2023/11/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Chiral perturbation theory predicts the chiral anomaly to induce a so-called Chiral Soliton Lattice at sufficiently large magnetic fields and baryon chemical potentials. This state breaks translational invariance in the direction of the magnetic field and was shown to be unstable with respect to charged pion condensation. Improving on previous work by considering a realistic pion mass, we employ methods from type-II superconductivity and construct a three-dimensional pion (and baryon) crystal perturbatively, close to the instability curve of the Chiral Soliton Lattice. We find an analogue of the usual type-I/type-II transition in superconductivity: Along the instability curve for magnetic fields eB > 0.12 \rm GeV2 and chemical potentials μ< 910 \rm MeV, this crystal can continuously supersede the Chiral Soliton Lattice. For smaller magnetic fields the instability curve must be preceded by a discontinuous transition.