Speaker
Description
We employ a model based on nucleonic and mesonic degrees of freedom to describe cold and dense matter, in order to discuss the competition between isotropic and anisotropic phases, in the region of the chiral phase transition. Anisotropic phases have been extensively studied in quark models of dense matter, but equivalent progress was lacking in models using nucleonic degrees of freedom. When such models were employed, the nucleonic Dirac sea contribution to the pressure was neglected. We show that including it produces a significant effect both for the isotropic and anisotropic phases. Allowing for an anisotropic phase in the form of a chiral density wave, we observe a smooth crossover being disrupted. We identify the regions in the parameter space of the model where a chiral density wave is energetically preferred. A high-density re-appearance of the chiral density wave with unphysical behavior, which is present in previous studies, is avoided by choosing a suitable renormalization scheme.
