Surface tension of dense matter at the chiral phase transition

Understand

If a first-order phase transition separates nuclear and quark matter at large baryon density, an interface between these two phases has a nonzero surface tension.

• We calculate this surface tension within a nucleon-meson model for domain walls and bubbles.
• Various methods and approximations are discussed and compared, including a numerical evaluation of the spatial profile of the interface.
• We also compute the surface tension at the other first-order phase transitions of the model: the nuclear liquid-gas transition and, in the parameter regime where it exists, the direct transition from the vacuum to the (approximately) chirally symmetric phase.