Collective excitations in a superfluid of color-flavor locked quark matter

Abstract

We investigate collective excitations coupled with baryon density in a system of massless three-flavor quarks in the collisionless regime. By using the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model in the mean-field approximation, we derive the spectra both for the normal and color-flavor locked (CFL) superfluid phases at zero temperature. In the normal phase, we obtain zero sound as a low-lying collective mode in the particle-hole (vector) channel. In the CFL phase, when the excitation energy, $\omega$, is smaller than the threshold given by twice the pairing gap $\Delta$ ($\omega<2\Delta$), a phonon corresponding to fluctuations in the U(1) phase of $\Delta$ appears as a sharp peak in the particle-particle ($H$) channel. We reproduce the property known from low energy effective theories that this mode propagates at a velocity of $v_H=1/\sqrt{3}$ in the low momentum regime; the decay constant $f_H$ in the NJL model is identical with the QCD result in the mean-field approximation. We also find that as the momentum of the phonon increases, the excitation energy goes up and asymptotically approaches $\omega=2\Delta$. Above the threshold for pair excitations ($\omega>2\Delta$), zero sound manifests itself in the vector channel. By locating the zero sound pole of the vector propagator in the complex energy plane we investigate the attenuation and energy dispersion relation of zero sound. In the long wavelength limit, the phonon mode has its spectral weight in the $H$ channel alone, while the spectral function vanishes in the vector channel. We finally extend our study to the case of nonzero temperature.