Inhomogeneity driven by Higgs instability in a gapless superconductor

Ioannis Giannakis; Defu Hou; Mei Huang; Hai-cang Ren

doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.75.014015

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Inhomogeneity driven by Higgs instability in a gapless superconductor

Ioannis Giannakis, Defu Hou, Mei Huang, Hai-cang Ren

DOI 10.1103/PhysRevD.75.014015 · Physical Review D

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Abstract

The fluctuations of the Higgs and pseudo Nambu-Goldstone fields in the 2-flavor color superconductivity (2SC) phase with mismatched pairing are described in the nonlinear realization framework of the gauged Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model. In the gapless 2SC phase, not only Nambu-Goldstone currents can be spontaneously generated, but also the Higgs field exhibits instablity. The Nambu-Goldstone currents generation indicates the formation of the single plane wave Larkin-Ovchinnikov-Fulde-Ferrel state and breaks rotation symmetry, while the Higgs instability favors spatial inhomogeneity and breaks translation invariance. In this paper, we focus on the Higgs instability which has not drawn much attention yet. The Higgs instability cannot be removed without a long range force, thus it persists in the gapless superfluidity and induces phase separation. In the case of gapless 2-flavor color superconductivity state, the Higgs instability can only be partially removed by the electric Coulomb energy. However, it is not excluded that the Higgs instability might be completely removed in the charge neutral gapless color-flavor locked phase by the color Coulomb energy.