Stressed Cooper pairing in QCD at high isospin density: effective Lagrangian and random matrix theory

Abstract

We generalize QCD at asymptotically large isospin chemical potential to an arbitrary even number of flavors. We also allow for small quark chemical potentials, which stress the coincident Fermi surfaces of the paired quarks and lead to a sign problem in Monte Carlo simulations. We derive the corresponding low-energy effective theory in both $p$- and $\epsilon$-expansion and quantify the severity of the sign problem. We construct the random matrix theory describing our physical situation and show that it can be mapped to a known random matrix theory at low baryon density so that new insights can be gained without additional calculations. In particular, we explain the Silver Blaze phenomenon at high isospin density. We also introduce stressed singular values of the Dirac operator and relate them to the pionic condensate. Finally we comment on extensions of our work to two-color QCD.