Phases and condensates in zero-temperature QCD at finite μ_I and μ_S

Abstract

I discuss pion and kaon condensation and the the properties of the phases of QCD at finite isospin chemical potential μI and strangeness chemical potential μS at zero temperature using three-flavor chiral perturbation theory. Electromagnetic effects are included in the calculation of the phase diagram, which implies that the charged meson condensed phases become superconducting phases of QCD with a massive photon via the Higgs mechanism. Without electromagnetic effects, we show results for the light quark condensate and the pion condensate as functions of μI at next-to-leading (NLO) order in the lowenergy expansion. The results are compared with recent lattice simulations and by including the NLO corrections, one obtains very good agreement.