Anisotropic Goldstone bosons of strong-coupling lattice QCD at high density

Abstract

We calculate the spectrum of excitations in strong-coupling lattice QCD in a background of fixed baryon density, at a substantial fraction of the saturation density. We employ a next-nearest-neighbor fermion formulation that possesses the SU(N_f)xSU(N_f) chiral symmetry of the continuum theory. We find two types of massless excitations: type I Goldstone bosons with linear dispersion relations and type II Goldstone bosons with quadratic dispersion relations. Some of the type I bosons originate as type II bosons of the nearest-neighbor theory. Bosons of either type can develop anisotropic dispersion relations, depending on the value of N_f and the baryon density.