Spontaneous rotational symmetry breaking and roton like excitations in gauged sigma-model at finite density

Abstract

The linear $\sigma$-model with a chemical potential for hypercharge is a toy model for the description of the dynamics of the kaon condensate in high density QCD. We analyze the dynamics of the gauged version of this model. It is shown that spontaneous breakdown of $SU(2) \times U(1)_{Y}$ symmetry, caused by the chemical potential, is always accompanied by spontaneous breakdown of both rotational symmetry and electromagnetic $U(1)_{em}$. The spectrum of excitations in this model is rich and, because of rotational symmetry breakdown, anisotropic. It is shown that there exist excitation branches that behave as phonon like quasiparticles for small momenta and as roton like ones for large momenta. This suggests that this model can be relevant for anisotropic superfluid systems.