Fluctuations in cool quark matter and the phase diagram of Quantum Chromodynamics

Understand

We consider the phase diagram of hadronic matter as a function of temperature, T , and baryon chemical potential, mu.

• Currently the dominant paradigm is a line of first order transitions which ends at a critical endpoint.
• In this work we suggest that spatially inhomogenous phases are a generic feature of the hadronic phase diagram at nonzero mu and low T .
• Familiar examples are pion and kaon condensates.