Charged Pion Condensation in Dense Quark Matter: Nambu–Jona-Lasinio Model Study

Abstract

In this short review we tried to give an outline of investigations of charged pion condensation (PC) in dense baryonic (quark) matter in the framework of effective Nambu–Jona-Lasinio (NJL)-type models. The possibility of charged PC phase in dense quark matter with isospin asymmetry is investigated. First, it is demonstrated that this phase can be realized in the framework of massless NJL model. However, the existence of this phase is enormously fragile to the values of current quark mass and we show that charged PC phase is forbidden in electrically neutral dense quark matter with β -equilibrium when current quark masses are close to their physical value of 5.5 MeV. Nevertheless, then it is shown that in real physical systems there could be conditions promoting the appearance of charged PC phenomenon in dense quark matter; specifically, it was shown that if one takes into consideration the fact that system can have finite size, then a dense charged PC phase can be realized there. It was also demonstrated that the possibility of inhomogeneous pion condensate might allow this phase to appear. In addition, more recently it was revealed that there is another interesting factor that can induce a charged PC phase in dense quark matter even without isospin imbalance. It is a chiral imbalance of the system (non-zero difference between densities of left- and right-handed quarks). These results can be interesting in heavy ion collision experiments, where it is expected to get high baryon densities. It is of interest also in the context of neutron stars, where quark matter might be realized in the core and very high baryon and isospin densities are attained.