Meson condensation and critical point in dense quark matter

Abstract

The phase structure of dense QCD matter is studied based on the Ginzburg‐Landau approach. In three flavor massless quark matter, one can show that a novel entanglement between chiral condensate and diquark condensate via the axial anomaly gives rise to a critical point at moderate density. We further investigate the effect of nonzero strange quark mass by taking into account a possible meson condensate. Then the fate of the critical point is discussed.