On the QCD ground state at high density Original Research Article

We investigate the possible ground states of QCD at asymptotic densities, where the theory is expected to exhibit color superconductivity. We characterize the color–flavor structure of possible diquark condensates, and find those that are energy extrema by solving the weak-coupling Dyson–Schwinger equations, including Landau damping and the Meissner effect. We show that, as previously anticipated, in the two flavor case the vacuum breaks SU(3) color to SU(2) and in the three flavor case the vacua with color–flavor locking (CFL) have the lowest energy. We identify a number of relatively flat directions in the potential along which the pattern of gauge symmetry breaking changes and parity is violated. We discuss possible phenomenological consequences of our results.