QCD in the heavy dense regime: Large Nc and quarkyonic matter
Abstract
After combined character and hopping expansions and integration over the spatial gauge links, lattice QCD reduces to a three-dimensional SU(3) Polyakov loop model with complicated interactions. A simple truncation of the effective theory is valid for heavy quarks on reasonably fine lattices and can be solved by linked cluster expansion in its effective couplings. This was used ealier to demonstrate the onset transition to baryon matter in the cold and dense regime. Repeating these studies for general Nc, one finds that for large Nc the onset transition becomes first-order, and the pressure scales as p Nc through three consecutive orders in the hoppoing expansion. These features are consistent with the formal definition of quarkyonic matter given in the literature. We discuss the implications for Nc=3 and physical QCD.