Chiral soliton lattice phase in warm QCD

Abstract

We analyze the phase diagram of quantum chromodynamics at low-to-moderate temperature, baryon chemical potential and external magnetic field within chiral perturbation theory at next-to-leading order of the derivative expansion. Our main result is that the anomaly-induced chiral soliton lattice (CSL) phase is stabilized by thermal fluctuations. As a consequence, the CSL state may survive up to temperatures at which chiral symmetry is restored.