Current Seminars

We employ a model based on nucleonic and mesonic degrees of freedom to describe cold and dense matter, in the region of the chiral phase transition, at zero net isospin. The model can describe both chirally broken and symmetric nucleons, and is in some sense complementary to the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model which describes chirally broken/symmetric quarks. This model has been previously used to calculate the surface tension on a nuclear/quark matter interface, to build mixed (pasta-like) phases, and to describe hyperonic/strange matter in neutron stars. In this work we discuss the competition between isotropic and anisotropic phases at intermediate densities and zero temperature. Anisotropic phases have been extensively studied in quark models of dense matter, but equivalent progress is lacking in models using nucleonic degrees of freedom. When such models are employed, the nucleonic Dirac sea contribution to the pressure is neglected, while we show that including it produces a significant effect. Assuming isotropy, the model exhibits a chiral phase transition which is of second order in the chiral limit and becomes a crossover in the case of a realistic pion mass. This observation crucially depends on the presence of the nucleonic sea; if one neglects it, the transition becomes a first order. Allowing for an anisotropic phase in the form of a chiral density wave, we observe the 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. A nonzero pion mass tends to disfavor the anisotropic phase compared to the chiral limit and we find that, within our model, the chiral density wave is only realized for baryon densities of at least about 6 times nuclear saturation density. Future works will focus on extending the study for neutron star conditions.

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In this ongoing five-year research, rotating Anti-de Sitter spacetimes are applied to model quark-gluon-like plasmas typical in heavy ion collisions. Employing AdS/CFT correspondence, we present a stationary, rotating, strongly coupled conformal plasma, modeled as a dual to a 5D Myers-Perry Anti-de Sitter Black Hole. We derive and calculate the plasma's long and short-wavelength spectra, distinguished as hydrodynamic and non-hydrodynamic modes, based on linear perturbations in the 5D gravitational theory. These perturbations, corresponding to 4D plasma fluctuations, yield distinct quasinormal modes, identified as eigenvalues of a non-Hermitian operator. Our investigation explores the application of hydrodynamics to these plasmas, particularly under rotational conditions including near-extremality. We computed the radius of convergence for hydrodynamic regimes, derived explicit hydrodynamic dispersion relations with boosted fluid transport coefficients, parameterized with momentum and vorticity. The study verifies the physical behavior of modeled plasmas, ensuring stability and causality across all temperatures and non-subluminal vorticities, aligning with prior findings on relativistic fluids. Additionally, we explore novel behaviors in the non-hydrodynamic spectrum under rotation, such as critical points, mode decay enhancement or suppression, and multiple level crossings between non-hydrodynamic modes. Similar to charged holographic fluids, we also observe features such as the emergence of branch cuts near extremality.

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