Dense QCD: a Holographic Dyonic Salt

Understand

Dense QCD at zero temperature with a large number of colors is a crystal.

• We show that in the holographic dual description, the crystal is made out of pairs of dyons with $e=g=\pm 1$ charges in a salt-like arrangement.
• We argue that with increasing density the dyon masses and topological charges equalize, turning the salt-like configuration to a bcc of half-instantons.
• The latter is dual to a cubic crystal of half-skyrmions.