After a review of the crystalline color superconductive (LOFF) phase, I discuss the Nambu Goldstone Boson associated with the breaking of rotational and translational invariance and I briefly consider possible astrophysical implications.
We construct the effective potential for a QCD-like theory using the auxiliary field method. The chiral phase transition exhibited by the model at finite temperature and the quark chemical potential is studied from the viewpoint of the shape change o
f the potential near the critical point. We further generalize the effective potential so as to have quark number and scalar quark densities as independent variables near the tri-critical point.
With combined hopping parameter and strong coupling expansions, we calculate a dimensionally reduced Polyakov-loop effective theory valid for heavy quarks at nonzero temperature and arbitrary chemical potential. We numerically compute the critical en
dpoint of the deconfinement transition as a function of quark masses and number of flavours. We also investigate the applicability of the model to the low-T and high density region, specifically in terms of baryon condensation phenomena.
Hard Probes are an essential tool to discover the properties of the quark-gluon plasma created in heavy-ion collisions. The study of hard probes always involves taking into account very different energy scales, and this is precisely the situation in
which Effective Fields Theories (EFTs) are useful. EFTs can be used to separate the short-distance and perturbative physics from the long-distance and non-perturbative. This method combined with Lattice QCD evaluations of the long-distance effects can provide accurate and first principles results. In this proceeding, I will report recent advances in this direction. Results from an EFT computation of quarkonium $R_{AA}$ at $sqrt{s_{NN}}=5.02,textit{TeV}$ are shown for the first time here.
The problem of quarkonium production in heavy ion collisions presents a set of unique theoretical challenges -- from the relevant production mechanism of $J/psi$ and $Upsilon$ to the relative significance of distinct cold and hot nuclear matter effec
ts in the observed attenuation of quarkonia. Inthese proceedings we summarize recent work on the generalization of non-relativistic Quantum Chromodynamics (NRQCD) to include off-shell gluon (Glauber/Coulomb) interactions in strongly interacting matter. This new effective theory provides for the first time a universal microscopic description of the in-medium interaction of heavy quarkonia, consistently applicable to a range of phases such as cold nuclear matter, dense hadron gas, and quark-gluon plasma. It is an important step forward in understanding the common trends in proton-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus data on quarkonium suppression. We derive explicitly the leading and sub-leading interaction terms in the Lagrangian and show the connection of the leading result to existing phenomenology.
The axion is much lighter than all other degrees of freedom introduced by the Peccei-Quinn mechanism to solve the strong CP problem. It is therefore natural to use an effective field theory (EFT) to describe its interactions. Loop processes calculate
d in the EFT may, however, explicitly depend on the ultraviolet cutoff. In general the UV cutoff is not uniquely defined, but the dimensionful couplings suggest to identify it with the Peccei-Quinn symmetry-breaking scale. An example are $K rightarrow pi + a$ decays that will soon be tested to improved precision in NA62 and KOTO and whose amplitude is dominated by the term logarithmically dependent on the cutoff. In this paper, we critically examine the adequacy of using such a naive EFT approach to study loop processes by comparing EFT calculations with ones performed in complete QCD axion models. In DFSZ models, for example, the cutoff is found to be set by additional Higgs degrees of freedom and to therefore be much closer to the electroweak scale than to the Peccei-Quinn scale. In fact, there are non-trivial requirements on axion models where the cutoff scale of loop processes is close to the Peccei-Quinn scale, such that the naive EFT result is reproduced. This suggests that the existence of a suitable UV embedding may impose restrictions on axion EFTs. We provide an explicit construction of a model with suitable fermion couplings and find promising prospects for NA62 and IAXO.