New critical point induced by the axial anomaly in dense QCD

Phys Rev Lett. 2006 Sep 22;97(12):122001. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.97.122001. Epub 2006 Sep 18.

Abstract

We study the interplay between chiral and diquark condensates within the framework of the Ginzburg-Landau free energy, and classify possible phase structures of two and three-flavor massless QCD. The QCD axial anomaly acts as an external field applied to the chiral condensate in a color superconductor and leads to a crossover between the broken chiral symmetry and the color superconducting phase, and, in particular, to a new critical point in the QCD phase diagram.