An effective field theory approach to color superconductivity at high quark density

Abstract

We investigate the Fermi Liquid theory of high density QCD. Using the renormalization group (RG), we determine the behavior of effective fermion interactions near the Fermi surface. At sufficiently high densities the matching between the Fermi Liquid theory and QCD can be accomplished in perturbation theory and a reliable calculation of Cooper pair formation performed, modulo the existence of screening masses for the gluon. The presence of a chemical potential leads to different RG flows for sub-components of the effective interactions which would ordinarily be linked by Lorentz invariance. We also study instanton-induced operators and find that near the Fermi surface they are likely to be subdominant relative to operators induced by perturbative gluon exchange. We discuss the implications of our results for the phase structure of QCD at finite baryon density and temperature.