Flavor-Parity Breaking in the NJL Model with Wilson Fermions

Abstract

The Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model is chirally symmetric. Addition of a Wilson term explicitly breaks this symmetry and leaves the model with a remaining parity-flavor symmetry. In the approximation of a large number of colors it has been shown that there is a phase where the remaining parity-flavor symmetry is spontaneously broken and that on the phase boundary all pions become massless. Using numerical simulations we confirm the existence of this phase for the case of two flavors and two colors. We also confirm the large N prediction of the existence of large finite size effects that alter the shape of the phase boundary dramatically when periodic boundary conditions are used.