From quarks and gluons to color superconductivity at supranuclear densities

We study the emergence of color superconductivity in the theory of the strong interaction at supranuclear densities. To this end, we follow the renormalization group (RG) flow of dense strong-interaction matter with two massless quark flavors from the fundamental quark and gluon degrees of freedom at high energies down to the non-perturbative low-energy regime which is found to be governed by the dynamical formation of diquark states. With the strong coupling at the initial RG scale as the only input parameter, we compute the (chirally symmetric) scalar diquark condensate and analyze its scaling behavior over a wide range of the quark chemical potential. Approximations entering our computations are critically assessed. Since our approach naturally allows us to study the scale dependence of couplings, we also monitor the strength of couplings appearing in low-energy models of dense strong-interaction matter. The observed dependence of these couplings on the quark chemical potential may help to amend model studies in the future.

Chiral and effective $U(1)_{rm A}$ symmetry restoration in QCD

The nature and location of the QCD phase transition close to the chiral limit restricts the phase structure of QCD with physical pion masses at non-vanishing density. At small pion masses, explicit $U(1)_{rm A}$-breaking, as induced by a non-trivial topological density, is of eminent importance. It triggers the t Hooft interactions and also manifests itself in the interplay of four-quark interactions at low momentum scales. In the present work, we perform a Fierz-complete analysis of the emergence of four-quark interactions from the QCD dynamics at finite temperature, subject to a given t Hooft coupling at large momentum scales. The variation of the latter allows us to test the robustness of our findings. Taking an estimate of the effect of the topological running of the t Hooft coupling into account, our analysis suggests that the chiral transition in QCD with two massless quark flavours falls into the $O(4)$ universality class.

Renormalization Group Studies of Dense Relativistic Systems

Dense relativistic matter has attracted a lot of attention over many decades now, with a focus on an understanding of the phase structure and thermodynamics of dense strong-interaction matter. The analysis of dense strong-interaction matter is complicated by the fact that the system is expected to undergo a transition from a regime governed by spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking at low densities to a regime governed by the presence of a Cooper instability at intermediate and high densities. Renormalization group (RG) approaches have played and still play a prominent role in studies of dense matter in general. In the present work, we study RG flows of dense relativistic systems in the presence of a Cooper instability and analyze the role of the Silver-Blaze property. In particular, we critically assess how to apply the derivative expansion to study dense-matter systems in a systematic fashion. This also involves a detailed discussion of regularization schemes. Guided by these formal developments, we introduce a new class of regulator functions for functional RG studies which is suitable to deal with the presence of a Cooper instability in relativistic theories. We close by demonstrating its application with the aid of a simple quark-diquark model.

Chiral Susceptibility in (2+1)-flavour QCD

We calculate chiral susceptibilities in (2+1)-flavour QCD for different masses of the light quarks using the functional renormalisation group (fRG) approach to first-principles QCD. We follow the evolution of the chiral susceptibilities with decreasing masses as obtained from both the light-quark and the reduced quark condensate. The latter compares very well with recent results from the HotQCD collaboration for pion masses $m_{pi}gtrsim 100,text{MeV}$. For smaller pion masses, the fRG and lattice results are still consistent. In particular, the estimates for the chiral critical temperature are in very good agreement. We close by discussing different extrapolations to the chiral limit.

Pairing patterns in one-dimensional spin- and mass-imbalanced Fermi gases

We study spin- and mass-imbalanced mixtures of spin-$tfrac{1}{2}$ fermions interacting via an attractive contact potential in one spatial dimension. Specifically, we address the influence of unequal particle masses on the pair formation by means of the complex Langevin method. By computing the pair-correlation function and the associated pair-momentum distribution we find that inhomogeneous pairing is present for all studied spin polarizations and mass imbalances. To further characterize the pairing behavior, we analyze the density-density correlations in momentum space, the so-called shot noise, which is experimentally accessible through time-of-flight imaging. At finite spin polarization, the latter is known to show distinct maxima at momentum configurations associated with the Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) instability. Besides those maxima, we find that additional features emerge in the noise correlations when mass imbalance is increased, revealing the stability of FFLO-type correlations against mass imbalance and furnishing an experimentally accessible signature to probe this type of pairing.

Fierz-complete NJL model study III: Emergence from quark-gluon dynamics

Our understanding of the dynamics and the phase structure of dense strong-interaction matter is to a large extent still built on the analysis of low-energy models, such as those of the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio-type. In this work, we analyze the emergence of the latter class of models at intermediate and low energy scales from fundamental quark-gluon interactions. To this end, we study the renormalization group flow of a Fierz-complete set of four-quark interactions and monitor their strength at finite temperature and quark chemical potential. At small quark chemical potential, we find that the scalar-pseudoscalar interaction channel is dynamically rendered most dominant by the gauge degrees of freedom, indicating the formation of a chiral condensate. Moreover, the inclusion of quark-gluon interactions leaves a significant imprint on the dynamics as measured by the curvature of the finite-temperature phase boundary which we find to be in accordance with lattice QCD results. At large quark chemical potential, we then observe that the dominance pattern of the four-quark couplings is changed by the underlying quark-gluon dynamics, without any fine-tuning of the four-quark couplings. In this regime, the scalar-pseudoscalar interaction channel becomes subleading and the dominance pattern suggests the formation of a chirally symmetric diquark condensate. In particular, our study confirms the importance of explicit $U_{mathrm{A}}(1)$ breaking for the formation of this type of condensate at high densities.

Polarized fermions in one dimension: density and polarization from complex Langevin calculations, perturbation theory, and the virial expansion

We calculate the finite-temperature density and polarization equations of state of one-dimensional fermions with a zero-range interaction, considering both attractive and repulsive regimes. In the path-integral formulation of the grand-canonical ensemble, a finite chemical potential asymmetry makes these systems intractable for standard Monte Carlo approaches due to the sign problem. Although the latter can be removed in one spatial dimension, we consider the one-dimensional situation in the present work to provide an efficient test for studies of the higher-dimensional counterparts. To overcome the sign problem, we use the complex Langevin approach, which we compare here with other approaches: imaginary-polarization studies, third-order perturbation theory, and the third-order virial expansion. We find very good qualitative and quantitative agreement across all methods in the regimes studied, which supports their validity.

In-medium bound-state formation and inhomogeneous condensation in Fermi gases in a hard-wall box

The formation of bosonic bound states underlies the formation of a superfluid ground state in the many-body phase diagram of ultracold Fermi gases. We study bound-state formation in a spin- and mass-imbalanced ultracold Fermi gas confined in a box with hard-wall boundary conditions. Because of the presence of finite Fermi spheres, the center-of-mass momentum of the potentially formed bound states can be finite, depending on the parameters controlling mass and spin imbalance as well as the coupling strength. We exploit this observation to estimate the potential location of inhomogeneous phases in the many-body phase diagram as a function of spin- and mass imbalance as well as the box size. Our results suggest that a hard-wall box does not alter substantially the many-body phase diagram calculated in the thermodynamic limit. Therefore, such a box may serve as an ideal trap potential to bring experiment and theory closely together and facilitate the search for exotic inhomogeneous ground states.

Crystalline Ground States in Polyakov-loop extended Nambu--Jona-Lasinio Models

Nambu--Jona-Lasinio-type models have been used extensively to study the dynamics of the theory of the strong interaction at finite temperature and quark chemical potential on a phenomenological level. In addition to these studies, which are often performed under the assumption that the ground state of the theory is homogeneous, searches for the existence of crystalline phases associated with inhomogeneous ground states have attracted a lot of interest in recent years. In this work, we study the Polyakov-loop extended Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model and find that the existence of a crystalline phase is stable against a variation of the parametrization of the underlying Polyakov loop potential. To this end, we adopt two prominent parametrizations. Moreover, we observe that the existence of a quarkyonic phase depends crucially on the parametrization, in particular in the regime of the phase diagram where inhomogeneous chiral condensation is favored.

Phase structure of mass- and spin-imbalanced unitary Fermi gases

We study the phase diagram of mass- and spin-imbalanced unitary Fermi gases, in search for the emergence of spatially inhomogeneous phases. To account for fluctuation effects beyond the mean-field approximation, we employ renormalization group techniques. We thus obtain estimates for critical values of the temperature, mass and spin imbalance, above which the system is in the normal phase. In the unpolarized, equal-mass limit, our result for the critical temperature is in accordance with state-of-the-art Monte Carlo calculations. In addition, we estimate the location of regions in the phase diagram where inhomogeneous phases are likely to exist. We show that an intriguing relation exists between the general structure of the many-body phase diagram and the binding energies of the underlying two-body bound-state problem, which further supports our findings. Our results suggest that inhomogeneous condensates form for mass ratios of the spin-down and spin-up fermions greater than three. The extent of the inhomogeneous phase in parameter space increases with increasing mass imbalance.