Dilepton production from moaton quasiparticles

Abstract

The phase diagram of QCD may contain a moat regime in a large region of temperature $T$ and chemical potential $\mu \ne 0$. A moat regime is characterized by quasiparticle moatons (pions) whose energy is minimal at nonzero spatial momentum. At $\mu \ne 0$, higher mass dimension operators play a critical role in a moat regime. At dimension six, there are nine possible gauge invariant couplings between scalars and photons. For back-to-back dilepton production, only one operator contributes, which significantly enhances production near a moat threshold. This enhancement is an experimental signature of moatons.

Comments: 9 pages, 3 figures; 3 pages references & supplemental material; version as accepted by PRL; corrected minor error in the numerics, extended and improved upon the discussion of literature and results