Chiral soliton lattice at next-to-leading order

Abstract

Abstract We compute the free energy of the chiral soliton lattice state in quantum chromodynamics (QCD) at nonzero baryon chemical potential, temperature and external magnetic field at the next-to-leading order of chiral perturbation theory. This extends previous work where only a special limit of the chiral soliton lattice, the domain wall, was considered. Our results therefore serve as a consistency check of the previously established phase diagram of QCD at moderate magnetic fields and temperature and sub-nuclear baryon chemical potentials. Moreover, we use the result for the free energy to determine the magnetization carried by the domain wall and the chiral soliton lattice, both at the next-to-leading order.