New Critical Point Induced by the Axial Anomaly in Dense QCD

Abstract

We study the interplay between chiral and diquark condensates within the framework of the Ginzburg-Landau free energy, and classify possible phase structures of two and three-flavor massless QCD. The QCD axial anomaly acts as an external field applied to the chiral condensate in a color superconductor and leads to a crossover between the broken chiral symmetry and the color superconducting phase, and, in particular, to a new critical point in the QCD phase diagram.

Comments: 4 pages, 4 figures included, version to appear in Phys. Rev. Lett