SO(10) Unification of Color Superconductivity and Chiral Symmetry Breaking?

Abstract

Motivated by the SO(5) theory of high-temperature superconductivity and antiferromagnetism, we ask if an SO(10) theory unifies color superconductivity and chiral symmetry breaking in QCD. The transition to the color superconducting phase would then be analogous to a spin flop transition. While the spin flop transition generically has a unified SO(3) description, the SO(5) and SO(10) symmetric fixed points are unstable, at least in (4 - epsilon) dimensions, and require the fine-tuning of one additional relevant parameter. If QCD is near the SO(10) fixed point, it has interesting consequences for heavy ion collisions and neutron stars.