Holographic quarkyonic matter

Understand

We point out a new configuration in the Witten-Sakai-Sugimoto model, allowing baryons in the pointlike approximation to coexist with fundamental quarks.

• The resulting phase is a holographic realization of quarkyonic matter, which is predicted to occur in QCD at a large number of colors, and possibly plays a role in real-world QCD as well.
• We find that holographic quarkyonic matter is chirally symmetric and that, for large baryon chemical potentials, it is energetically preferred over pure nuclear matter and over pure quark matter.
• The zero-temperature transition from nuclear matter to the quarkyonic phase is of first order in the chiral limit and for a realistic pion mass.