Phases of kinky holographic nuclear matter

Understand

Holographic QCD at finite baryon number density and zero temperature is studied within the five-dimensional Sakai-Sugimoto model.

• We introduce a new approximation that models a smeared crystal of solitonic baryons by assuming spatial homogeneity to obtain an effective kink theory in the holographic direction.
• The kink theory correctly reproduces a first order phase transition to lightly bound nuclear matter.
• As the density is further increased the kink splits into a pair of half-kink constituents, providing a concrete realization of the previously suggested dyonic salt phase, where the bulk soliton splits into constituents at high density.