Quarkyonic Chiral Spirals in the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio Approach

Understand

We explore the inhomogeneous QCD phases at finite density and temperature using a (3+1)-dimensional Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model in the large Nc limit with an additional attractive tensor-tensor interaction channel.

• For single modulated solutions, the problem reduces to solving the gap equation of a Chiral Gross-Neveu (NJL2) theory, whose minimum solution is a periodic array of chirally twisted kinks.
• At zero temperature, the minimum solution reduces to the quarkyonic chiral spiral found in quarkyonic matter.
• The connection between the quarkyonic matter and our (3+1)-dimensional NJL model is rooted on the fact that the first reduces to (1+1)-dimensional QCD and the second to the NJL2 theory, both of which have continuous chiral symmetry and asymptotic freedom.