Eur. Phys. J. A (2013) 49: 87
https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/i2013-13087-6

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

Phase transitions and gluodynamics in 2-colour matter at high density

¹⁹⁹¹⁵ Department of Mathematical Physics, National University of Ireland Maynooth, County Kildare, Ireland
²⁹⁹¹⁵ Department of Physics, Syracuse University, 13244, Syracuse, NY, USA

^* e-mail: jonivar@thphys.nuim.ie

Received: 11 March 2013
Revised: 27 May 2013
Accepted: 13 June 2013
Published online: 17 July 2013

Abstract

We investigate 2-colour QCD with 2 flavours of Wilson fermion at nonzero temperature T and quark chemical potential μ, with a pion mass of 700 MeV (m _π /m _ρ = 0.8). From temperature scans at fixed μ we find that the critical temperature for the superfluid to normal transition depends only very weakly on μ above the onset chemical potential, while the deconfinement crossover temperature is clearly decreasing with μ. We find indications of a region of superfluid but deconfined matter at high μ and intermediate T. The static quark potential determined from the Wilson loop is found to exhibit a “string tension” that increases at large μ in the “deconfined” region. The electric (longitudinal) gluon propagator in Landau gauge becomes strongly screened with increasing temperature and chemical potential. The magnetic (transverse) gluon shows little sensitivity to temperature, and exhibits a mild enhancement at intermediate μ before becoming suppressed at large μ.