Aspects of Meson Condensation

Abstract

In this work pion and kaon condensation in the framework of chiral perturbation theory is studied. I consider a system at vanishing temperature with nonzero isospin chemical potential and strangeness chemical potential; meson masses and mixing in the normal phase, the pion condensation phase and the kaon condensation phase are described. There are differences with previous works, but the results presented here are supported by both theory group analysis and by direct calculations. Some pion decay channels in the normal and the pion condensation phases are studied, finding a nonmonotonic behavior of the $\Gamma$ decay width as a function of $\mu_I$.