The crystallography of color superconductivity

Abstract

We describe the crystalline phase of color superconducting quark matter. This phase may occur in quark matter at densities relevant for compact star physics, with possible implications for glitch phenomena in pulsars. We use a Ginzburg-Landau approach to determine that the crystal has a face-centered-cubic (FCC) structure. Moreover, our results indicate that the phase is robust, with gaps, critical temperature, and free energy comparable to those of the color-flavor-locked (CFL) phase. Our calculations also predict ``crystalline superfluidity'' in ultracold gases of fermionic atoms.