Inhomogeneous chiral symmetry breaking phases in isospin-asymmetric matter

Abstract

We investigate the effects of isospin asymmetry on inhomogeneous chiral symmetry breaking phases within the two-flavor NJL model. After introducing a plane-wave ansatz for each quark-flavor condensate, we find that, as long as their periodicities are enforced to be equal, a non-zero isospin chemical potential shrinks the size of the inhomogeneous phase. The asymmetry reached in charge neutral matter is nevertheless not excessively large, so that an inhomogeneous window is still present in the phase diagram. Lifting the constraint of equal periodicities alters the picture significantly, as the inhomogeneous phase survives in a much larger region of the phase diagram.