Phase Transition in Dense QCD with the Schwinger-Dyson Equation

Abstract

We investigate the phase structure of dense QCD using the Schwinger-Dyson equation (SDE) with the improved ladder approximation in the Landau gauge. We use the gluon propagator with the electric mode corrected by Debye screening and the magnetic mode corrected by Landau damping. We solve the coupled SDE for the Majorana masses of the quark and antiquark (separately from the SDE for the Dirac mass) in the low density and intermediate density regions. In the low density region, both the SDEs for the Majorana masses and the Dirac mass have nontrivial solutions that correspond to the color symmetry breaking (CSB) vacuum and the chiral symmetry breaking (χSB) vacuum. Comparing the values of the effective potential in the two vacua, we show that the phase transition from the χSB vacuum to the CSB vacuum is of first order. The resultant value of the critical chemical potential is about 210 MeV, which is smaller than that obtained from the SDE analysis including only the Dirac mass. The momentum dependences of the Majorana masses of the quark and antiquark are shown to be quite different, although the masses are of the same order.