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# Darwin-Foldy term and proton charge radius

Back in 1958 Foldy , following Pauli’s early work on incorporating the anomalous magnetic moment of a particle into the Dirac equation, proposed a systematic way of including finite size effects in the description of a relativistic spin $`\frac{1}{2}`$ particle in interaction with an external electromagnetic field by means of the Dirac equation. An apparently perturbing feature of Foldy’s treatment when applied to a neutron is that the magnitude of the neutron charge radius is accounted for almost completely by treating the neutron as a point Dirac particle (the “Darwin-Foldy”term), thus apparently leaving no room for finite size effects  but rather a so-called “intrinsic radius” much smaller than the Compton wavelength of the neutron.

We recently suggested that the composite nature of the neutron can be described by including Dirac-Pauli form factors in the Dirac equation. Then, the Darwin-Foldy term is cancelled exactly by a term in a low-momentum expansion of the form factors, leaving the quantity measured in neutron-electron scattering to be directly identified with the neutron charge radius . Our result agrees with recent results by Isgur  (in the context of the valence quark model) and Cardarelli and Simula  (in the relativistic constituent quark model). Note however that the interpretation of the Darwin-Foldy term for a particle with structure remains a controversial topic . For example, one can read in  that the intrinsic radius “provides a measure of the failure of the Dirac-Pauli equation to account in detail for the observed properties of the neutron at low energy”.

In this contribution we study the Dirac equation for a finite size proton in an external electric field with explicit introduction of Dirac-Pauli form factors. Our aim is twofold. On the one hand, we wish to study whether our conclusions regarding the exact cancellation between Dirac form factor and Foldy term contributions occurring for the neutron still hold for the proton. On the other hand, we wish to clearly illustrate some of the specific features of the description of a composite particle like the proton with the Dirac equation. Indeed, the Dirac equation includes the effect of virtual particle-antiparticle creation pair terms (Foldy’s “dancing motion”) which endow even a charged point particle with an effective size, the Darwin term. (The “Darwin-Foldy” term of the neutron, however, arises from the large anomalous magnetic moment of this neutral particle). Whether such an effect should be included in the definition of the particle charge radius is at the heart of the controversy surrounding the Dirac approach description of the nucleon charge radius.

Our main results are the following:
1) The Dirac form factor contribution continues to cancel the Darwin-Foldy contribution from the proton’s anomalous magnetic moment (as was also demonstrated in the model of Ref. ). There remains, however, the standard Darwin term (the $`\frac{e}{8m^2}`$ term) coming from the normal part of the proton magnetic moment, a consequence of the Zitterbewegung of the charged Dirac particle.
2) The above cancellation crucially depends upon using the Dirac equation with form factors to describe the finite size and anomalous magnetic moment of the baryons. The resulting charge radius is then that of the Sach’s form factor  and is thus the same as the definitions used in recent chiral perturbation theory calculations .

Our starting point is the Dirac Hamiltonian H for a finite size proton in an external field with explicit introduction of Dirac-Pauli form factors :

$$H=𝜶𝐩+\beta m+i\frac{eF_2}{2m}\beta 𝜶𝐄+eF_1V,$$
(1)
where $`F_1`$ and $`F_2`$ are, respectively, the proton Dirac and Pauli form factors, and $`V`$ is the potential associated with the external field $`𝐄`$ in the Coulomb gauge. The connection between $`F_1`$, $`F_2`$, and the electric and magnetic Sachs form factors $`G_E`$ and $`G_M`$ is:

$`G_E(t)`$ $`=`$ $`F_1(t)+{\displaystyle \frac{t}{4m^2}}F_2(t)`$
$`G_M(t)`$ $`=`$ $`F_1(t)+F_2(t)`$ (2)
The Sachs form factors have simple interpretations as the spatial Fourier transforms of the nucleon’s charge and magnetization distributions in the Breit frame, where $`t=𝐪^2`$, and $`𝐪`$ is the usual 3-dimensional momentum transfer. Specifically, we have:

$$\rho _P(𝐫)=\left(\frac{1}{2\pi }\right)^3d^3𝐪e^{+i𝐪𝐫}G_E(𝐪^2),$$
(3)
such that the normalization $`d^3𝐫\rho _P(𝐫)`$ is one for the proton. One defines the square of the proton charge radius $`r_{Ep}^2`$ by the relation:

$$G_E(𝐪^2)=1\frac{1}{6}r_{Ep}^2𝐪^2+\mathrm{}.$$
(4)
Taking into account the relations :

$$F_1(0)=1,$$
(5)
$$F_1^{}(0)\frac{F_1(𝐪^2=0)}{𝐪^2}=\frac{1}{6}r_{Ep}^2+\frac{\kappa }{4m^2},$$
(6)
where $`\kappa `$ is the proton anomalous dimensionless magnetic moment, we eventually get the following equation from the Foldy-Wouthuysen reduction of the Dirac Hamiltonian (1) together with a low $`𝐪^2`$ expansion of $`\stackrel{~}{V}(𝐪)=eF_1(𝐪^2)V(𝐪)`$ :

$`\{{\displaystyle \frac{𝐩^2}{2m}}{\displaystyle \frac{e𝐩}{2m^2}}(𝐄\times 𝜿)+{\displaystyle \frac{e^2\kappa ^2𝐄^2}{8m^3}}e({\displaystyle \frac{r_{Ep}^2}{6}}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{8m^2}})(\mathbf{}𝐄)`$
$`+V+{\displaystyle \frac{\mathbf{}^2}{8m^2}}\stackrel{~}{V}\}\psi `$ $`=E\psi ,`$ (7)
where $`\stackrel{~}{V}`$ is given by:

$$\stackrel{~}{V}(𝐫)eF_1V=e\left(\frac{1}{2\pi }\right)^3d^3𝐪e^{i𝐪𝐫}F_1(𝐪^2)V(𝐪).$$
(8)
In equation (7), the Dirac form factor contribution continues to cancel the Darwin-Foldy contribution from the proton’s anomalous magnetic moment (as was also demonstrated in the model of Ref. ). There remains, however, the standard Darwin term (the $`\frac{e}{8m^2}`$ term) coming from the normal part of the proton magnetic moment, a consequence of the dancing motion of the charged Dirac particle. By convention, that term, also present for a structureless electron, does not contribute to the charge radius. Thus the only structure term in the coefficient of the external field charge density is the physical charge radius square $`r_{Ep}`$. We therefore conclude that the inclusion of the nucleon form factor together with the definition of the nucleon charge radius given by equation (4) removes the apparent difficulties associated with using the Dirac equation to describe the nucleon charge radius. Contrary to previous statements in the literature (), the Dirac equation does not necessarily fail at the level of the Darwin-Foldy term.


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# Aspects of Color Superconductivity*footnote **footnote * A Lecture given at the 40th Cracow Jubilee School of Theoretical Physics, June 3 - 11, Zakopane, Poland, and partially at Cosmo 2000, Sep. 4 - 8, Cheju, Korea.

## I Introduction

Matter exhibits several different phases, as shown in Fig. 1, depending on external parameters. At temperature, higher than the deconfinement temperature ($`T>100`$ MeV), quarks confined in the nucleons get liberated and matter becomes a quark-gluon plasma, as happened in the very early universe. Similarly, also at extremely high density, where the Fermi momentum of nucleons in matter is larger than $`1`$ GeV or so as in the core of compact stars like neutron stars, the wavefunction of quarks in nucleons will overlap with that of quarks in other nucleons due to asymptotic freedom. At such high density, quarks are no longer confined in nucleons and thus the nuclear matter will become a quark matter, where rather weakly interacting quarks move around .

The Fermi surface of quark matter at high density is unstable at low temperature, a phenomenon called Cooper instability, against forming pairs of quarks or holes, if attraction exists between a pair of quarks or holes with opposite momenta. No matter how small the attraction is, it will dominate any repulsive forces at low energy, since the attraction between a pair of quarks or holes with opposite momenta is a relevant operator while all repulsive forces become irrelevant as one scales down toward the Fermi sea . It turns out that color anti-triplet diquark condensates are energetically most preferred among possible pairings, including particle-hole parings or density waves .

Intense study on color superconductivity  shows that superconducting quark matter has two different phases, depending on density.  New phases like the LOFF phase  or a chiral crystal phase  might exist at the intermediate density if one includes the Fermi surface mismatch due to the difference in quark mass. At intermediate density, the Cooper pair is color anti-triplet but flavor singlet, breaking only the color symmetry down to a subgroup, $`SU(3)_cSU(2)_c`$:

$`\psi _{Li}^a(\stackrel{}{p})\psi _{Lj}^b(\stackrel{}{p})`$ $`=`$ $`\psi _{Ri}^a(\stackrel{}{p})\psi _{Rj}^b(\stackrel{}{p})`$ (1)
$`=`$ $`ϵ_{ij}ϵ^{ab3}\mathrm{\Delta },`$ (2)
where $`i,j=1,2`$ and $`a,b=1,2,3`$ are flavor and color indices, respectively. For high density where the chemical potential is larger than the strange quark mass, $`\mu >m_s`$, the strange quark participates in Cooper-pairing. At such a high density, the Cooper-pair condensate is predicted to take a so-called color-flavor locking (CFL) form , breaking not only color symmetry but also flavor symmetry maximally:

$`\psi _{Li}^a(\stackrel{}{p})\psi _{Lj}^b(\stackrel{}{p})`$ $`=`$ $`\psi _{Ri}^a(\stackrel{}{p})\psi _{Rj}^b(\stackrel{}{p})`$ (3)
$`=`$ $`k_1\delta _i^a\delta _j^b+k_2\delta _j^a\delta _i^b.`$ (4)
At much higher density ($`\mu \mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}`$), $`k_1(\mathrm{\Delta }_0)k_2`$ and the color-flavor locking phase is shown to be energetically preferred .

## II Cooper pair gap and the critical points

There are two kinds of the attractive forces that lead to Cooper instability, depending on the density. At the intermediate density, where $`\mu <m_s`$ or $`\rho (510)\times 0.17\mathrm{fm}^3`$, the QCD interaction is approximated with four-quark interactions,

$$_{\mathrm{QCD}}^{\mathrm{eff}}\frac{g^2}{\mathrm{\Lambda }^2}\overline{\psi }\psi \overline{\psi }\psi +\mathrm{},$$
(5)
since both electric and magnetic gluons are screened due to the medium effect. This short-range attraction is precisely the BCS type interaction, which is generated in metal by the exchange of massive phonons. The Cooper pair gap is then given by

$$\mathrm{\Delta }ϵ_F\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }^2}{g^2p_F^2}\right],$$
(6)
which is estimated to be $`10100`$ MeV, for $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ and $`ϵ_F`$ are of the order of $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}`$ and $`g`$ is of the order of one at the intermediate density. On the other hand, though electric gluons are screened in quark matter, the magnetic gluons are not screened at high density even at a nonperturbative level, as argued convincingly by Son . Thus the Cooper-pairing force at high density is long-ranged and the gap equation is so-called the Eliashberg equation. The (long-range) magnetic gluon exchange interaction leads to an extra (infrared) logarithmic divergence in the gap equation, which is in hard-dense loop (HDL) approximation given as,

$`\mathrm{\Delta }(p_0)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{g_s^2}{36\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle _\mu ^\mu }𝑑q_0{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }(q_0)}{\sqrt{q_0^2+\mathrm{\Delta }^2}}}\mathrm{ln}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}}{|p_0q_0|}}\right)`$ (7)
where $`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}=4\mu /\pi (\mu /M)^5e^{3/2\xi }`$ with a gauge parameter $`\xi `$. By solving the gap equation (7), one finds the Cooper pair gap to be §§§ Were we to take the UV cutoff of the effective theory to be $`2\mu `$ instead of $`\mu `$, taken in , we would get the usual value, $`2^8`$, instead of $`2^2`$ for $`N_f=2`$ in the prefactor.

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_0=2^{9/2}\pi ^4N_f^{5/2}e^{3\xi /2+1}\frac{\mu }{g_s^5}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{3\pi ^2}{\sqrt{2}g_s}\right).$$
(8)
Though the ground state of quark matter is a color superconductor, one needs to know its criticality to observe color superconductivity in the laboratory or in stellar objects. The quark matter which might exist in the core of compact stars like neutron stars will be in the superconducting phase if the interior temperature of compact stars is lower than the critical temperature and the density is higher than the critical density. For the neutron stars, the inner temperature is estimated to be $`<0.7\mathrm{MeV}`$ and the core density is around $`1.7`$ $`\mathrm{fm}^3`$, which is ten times higher than the normal nuclear matter density . Since the critical temperature of BCS superconductivity is given as

$$T_c=\frac{1}{\pi }e^\gamma \mathrm{\Delta }0.57\mathrm{\Delta },$$
(9)
the critical temperature of color superconductivity at the intermediate density is quite large; $`T_c5`$-50 MeV. In dense QCD with unscreened magnetic gluons, the critical temperature turns out to take the BCS type value , $`T_c0.57\mathrm{\Delta }`$, though the pairing force is very different from that of the BCS superconductivity. Since the unscreened magnetic gluons give a much bigger gap than the usual BCS type gap, the critical temperature of color superconductvity is quite large compared to the interior temperature of neutron stars, regardless of the form of attractive forces.

It is instructive to derive the critical temperature for the color superconductivity at high density where the pairing is mediated by the unscreened magnetic gluons. We start with the zero temperature Cooper-pair gap equation, Eq. (7).

Following the imaginary-time formalism developed by Matsubara , the gap equation becomes at finite temperature $`T`$

$`\mathrm{\Delta }(\omega _n^{})={\displaystyle \frac{g_s^2}{9\pi }}T{\displaystyle \underset{n=\mathrm{}}{\overset{+\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{d}q}{2\pi }\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }(\omega _n)}{\omega _n^2+\mathrm{\Delta }^2(\omega _n)+q^2}\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}}{\left|\omega _n^{}\omega _n\right|}\right)},`$ (10)
where $`\omega _n=\pi T(2n+1)`$ and $`q\stackrel{}{v}_F\stackrel{}{q}`$. We now use the constant (but temperature-dependent) gap approximation, $`\mathrm{\Delta }(\omega _n)\mathrm{\Delta }(T)`$ for all $`n`$. Taking $`n^{}=0`$ and converting the logarithm into integration, we get

$`\mathrm{\Delta }(T)={\displaystyle \frac{g_s^2}{18\pi }}T{\displaystyle \underset{n=\mathrm{}}{\overset{+\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{d}q}{2\pi }_0^{\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}^2}dx\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }(T)}{\omega _n^2+\mathrm{\Delta }^2(T)+q^2}\frac{1}{x+(\omega _n\omega _0)^2}}.`$ (11)
Using the contour integral , one can in fact sum up over all $`n`$ to get

$`1`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{g_s^2}{36\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle dq_0^{\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}^2}\frac{\mathrm{d}x}{2\pi i}_C\frac{\mathrm{d}\omega }{1+e^{\omega /T}}\frac{1}{\left[\omega ^2q^2\mathrm{\Delta }^2(T)\right]\left[(\omega i\omega _0)^2x\right]}}.`$ (12)
Since the gap vanishes at the critical temperature, $`\mathrm{\Delta }(T_C)=0`$, we get, after performing the contour integration in Eq. (12),

$`1`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{g_s^2}{36\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle }\mathrm{d}q{\displaystyle _0^{\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}^2}}\mathrm{d}x\{{\displaystyle \frac{(\pi T_C)^2+xq^2}{\left[(\pi T_C)^2+xq^2\right]^2+(2\pi T_Cq)^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{tanh}\left[q/(2T_C)\right]}{2q}}`$ (14)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{(\pi T_C)^2+q^2x}{\left[(\pi T_C)^2+q^2x\right]^2+(2\pi T_C)^2x}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{coth}\left[\sqrt{x}/(2T_C)\right]}{2\sqrt{x}}}\}.`$
At high density $`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}T_C`$, the second term in the integral in Eq. (14) is negligible, compared to the first term, and integrating over $`x`$, we get

$`1`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{g_s^2}{36\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle _0^{\lambda _c}}dy{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{tanh}y}{y}}\left[\mathrm{ln}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\lambda _c^2}{(\pi /2)^2+y^2}}\right)+O\left({\displaystyle \frac{y^2}{\lambda _c^2}}\right)\right]`$ (15)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{g_s^2}{36\pi ^2}}\left[{\displaystyle _0^1}dy{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{tanh}y}{y}}\mathrm{ln}\lambda _c^2+{\displaystyle _1^{\lambda _c}}dy{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{tanh}y}{y}}\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle \frac{\lambda _c^2}{y^2}}+\mathrm{}\right]`$ (16)
$``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{g_s^2}{36\pi ^2}}\left[\mathrm{ln}\left(e^A\lambda _c\right)\right]^2`$ (17)
where we have introduced $`yq/(2T_C)`$ and $`\lambda _c\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}/(2T_C)`$ and $`A`$ is given as

$$A=_0^1dy\frac{\mathrm{tanh}y}{y}+_1^{\mathrm{}}dy\frac{\mathrm{tanh}y1}{y}=\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{4}{\pi }\right)+\gamma ,$$
(18)
where the Euler-Mascheroni constant $`\gamma 0.577`$. Therefore, we find the critical temperture

$$T_C=\frac{e^A}{2}\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{6\pi }{g_s}\right).$$
(19)
Now, one can also solve the gap equation Eq. (7) in the same approximation used to find the critical temperature. Taking the gap independent of the energy, we get

$`1`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{g_s^2}{18\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle _0^{\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{d}q_0}{\sqrt{q_0^2+\mathrm{\Delta }^2}}}\mathrm{ln}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}}{q_0}}\right)`$ (20)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{g_s^2}{18\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle _0^{\overline{\lambda }}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{d}x}{\sqrt{x^2+1}}}\left(\mathrm{ln}\overline{\lambda }\mathrm{ln}x\right)`$ (21)
$``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{g_s^2}{36\pi ^2}}\left[\mathrm{ln}\left(2\overline{\lambda }\right)\right]^2,`$ (22)
where we have introduced $`x=q_0/\mathrm{\Delta }`$, $`\overline{\lambda }\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}/\mathrm{\Delta }`$, and used the fact that the gap vanishes rapidly at energy higher than $`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}`$. In this constant gap approximation, the gap is given as

$$\mathrm{\Delta }=2\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{6\pi }{g_s}\right),$$
(23)
which is about $`1.75T_C`$. As comparison, we note in the BCS case, which has a contact four-Fermi interaction with strength $`\overline{g}`$, the critical temperature is given as

$`1`$ $`=`$ $`\overline{g}{\displaystyle _0^{\stackrel{~}{\omega }_c}}dz{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{tanh}z}{z}}`$ (24)
$``$ $`\overline{g}\left[{\displaystyle _1^{\stackrel{~}{\omega }_c}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{d}z}{z}}+{\displaystyle _0^1}dz{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{tanh}z}{z}}{\displaystyle _1^{\mathrm{}}}dz{\displaystyle \frac{1\mathrm{tanh}z}{z}}\right]`$ (25)
$`=`$ $`\overline{g}\mathrm{ln}\left(e^A\stackrel{~}{\omega }_c\right)`$ (26)
where $`\stackrel{~}{\omega }_c(1)`$ is determined by the Debye energy, $`\stackrel{~}{\omega }_c=\omega _D/(2T_C)`$. Since the gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }=2\omega _D\mathrm{exp}(1/\overline{g})`$ in the BCS superconductivity, the ratio between the critical temperature and the Cooper-pair gap in both the color superconductivity at high density and the BCS superconductivity is given as $`e^\gamma /\pi 0.57`$,

At high density, antiquarks are difficult to create due to the energy gap provided by the Fermi sea and thus it is energetically disfavored for antiquarks to participate in condensation. But, as the density becomes lower, one has to take into account the effect of antiquarks. In the high density effective theory, this effect is incorporated in the higher order operators . First, we add the leading $`1/\mu `$ corrections to the gap equation Eq. (7) to see how the formation of Cooper pair changes when the density decreases. The leading $`1/\mu `$ corrections to the quark-gluon interactions are

$$_1=\frac{1}{2\mu }\underset{\stackrel{}{v}_F}{}\psi ^{}(\stackrel{}{v}_F,x)\left(\gamma _{}D\right)^2\psi (\stackrel{}{v}_F,x)=\underset{\stackrel{}{v}_F}{}\left[\psi ^{}\frac{D_{}^2}{2\mu }\psi +g_s\psi ^{}\frac{\sigma _{\mu \nu }F^{\mu \nu }}{4\mu }\psi \right].$$
(27)
In the leading order in the HDL approximation, the loop correction to the vertex is neglected and the quark-gluon vertex is shifted by the $`1/\mu `$ correction as

$$ig_sv_F^iig_sv_F^iig_s\frac{l_{}^i}{\mu },$$
(28)
where $`l_i`$ is the momentum carried away from quarks by gluons. We note that since the $`1/\mu `$ correction to the quark-gluon vertex does not depend on the Fermi velocity of the quark, it generates a repulsion for quark pairs, bound by magnetic forces. For a constant gap approximation, $`\mathrm{\Delta }(p_{})\mathrm{\Delta }`$, the gap equation becomes in the leading order, as $`p_{}0`$,

$`1={\displaystyle \frac{g_s^2}{9\pi }}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{d}^2l_{}}{(2\pi )^2}\left[\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}}{|l_0|}\right)\frac{3}{2}\right]\frac{1}{l_{}^2+\mathrm{\Delta }^2}}={\displaystyle \frac{g_s^2}{36\pi ^2}}\mathrm{ln}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}}{\mathrm{\Delta }}}\right)\left[\mathrm{ln}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}}{\mathrm{\Delta }}}\right)3\right].`$ (29)
When $`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}e^3\mathrm{\Delta }`$, the gap due to the long-range color magnetic interaction disappears. Since the phase transition for color superconducting phase is believed to be of first order , we may assume that the gap has the same dependence on the chemical potential $`\mu `$ as the leading order. Then, the critical density for the color superconducting phase transition is given by

$$1=e^3\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{3\pi ^2}{\sqrt{2}g_s(\mu _c)}\right].$$
(30)
Therefore, if the strong interaction coupling is too strong at the scale of the chemical potential, the gap does not form. In other words, the chemical potential has to be bigger than a critical value, $`0.13\mathrm{GeV}<\mu _c<0.31\mathrm{GeV}`$, which is about the same as the one estimated in the literature .

## III The Color-Flavor-Locking phase

When $`N_f=3`$, the spin-zero component of the condensate becomes (flavor) anti-triplet,

$`\psi _{L}^{}{}_{i\alpha }{}^{a}(\stackrel{}{v}_F,x)\psi _{L}^{}{}_{j\beta }{}^{b}(\stackrel{}{v}_F,x)`$ $`=`$ $`\psi _{R}^{}{}_{i\alpha }{}^{a}(\stackrel{}{v}_F,x)\psi _{R}^{}{}_{j\beta }{}^{b}(\stackrel{}{v}_F,x)`$ (31)
$`=`$ $`ϵ_{ij}ϵ^{abc}ϵ_{\alpha \beta \gamma }K_c^\gamma (p_F),`$ (32)
where $`\psi (\stackrel{}{v}_F,x)`$ is the quark near the Fermi surface with Fermi velocity $`\stackrel{}{v}_F`$ . Using the global color and flavor symmetry, one can always diagonalize the spin-zero condensate as $`K_c^\gamma =\delta _c^\gamma K_\gamma `$. To determine the parameters, $`K_u`$, $`K_d`$, and $`K_s`$, we need to minimize the vacuum energy for the condensate. By the Cornwall-Jackiw-Tomboulis formalism , the vacuum energy in the HDL approximation is given as

$`V(\mathrm{\Delta })`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{Tr}\mathrm{ln}S^1+\mathrm{Tr}\mathrm{ln}\overline{)}+\mathrm{Tr}(S^1\overline{)})S+(2\mathrm{P}\mathrm{I}\mathrm{diagrams})`$ (33)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mu ^2}{4\pi }}{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{9}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{d^2l_{}}{(2\pi )^2}\left[\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{l_{}^2}{l_{}^2+\mathrm{\Delta }_i^2(l_{})}\right)+\frac{1}{2}\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }_i^2(l_{})}{l_{}^2+\mathrm{\Delta }_i^2(l_{})}\right]}+h.o.,`$ (34)
where $`h.o.`$ are the higher order terms in the HDL approximation, containing more powers of coupling $`g_s`$, and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_i`$’s are the eigenvalues of color anti-symmetric and flavor anti-symmetric $`9\times 9`$ gap, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{\alpha \beta }^{ab}`$. The 2PI diagrams are two-particle-irreducible vacuum diagrams. There is only one such diagram (see Fig. 2) in the leading order HDL approximation.

Since the gap depends only on energy in the leading order, one can easily perform the momentum integration in (34) to get If the condensate forms, the vacuum energy due to the gluons also depends on the gap due to the Meisner effect. But, it turns out to be subleading, compared to the quark vacuum energy; $`V_g(\mathrm{\Delta })M^2\mathrm{\Delta }^2\mathrm{ln}(\mathrm{\Delta }/\mu )g_s\mu ^2\mathrm{\Delta }^2`$ .,

$`V(\mathrm{\Delta })`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mu ^2}{4\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑l_0\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }_i^2}{\sqrt{l_0^2}+\sqrt{l_0^2+\mathrm{\Delta }_i^2}}}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }_i^2}{\sqrt{l_0^2+\mathrm{\Delta }_i^2}}}\right)`$ (35)
$``$ $`0.43{\displaystyle \frac{\mu ^2}{4\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}\left|\mathrm{\Delta }_i(0)\right|^2,`$ (36)
where in the second line we used an approximation that

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_i(l_0)\{\begin{array}{cc}\mathrm{\Delta }_i(0)\hfill & \text{if }\left|l_0\right|<\left|\mathrm{\Delta }_i(0)\right|,\hfill \\ 0\hfill & \text{otherwise}.\hfill \end{array}$$
(37)
Were $`\mathrm{\Delta }_i`$ independent of each other, the global minimum should occur at $`\mathrm{\Delta }_i(0)=\mathrm{const}.`$ for all $`i=1,\mathrm{},9`$. But, due to the global color and flavor symmetry, only three of them are independent. Similarly to the condensate, the gap can be also diagonalized by the color and flavor symmetry as

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_{ab}^{\alpha \beta }=ϵ_{\alpha \beta \gamma }ϵ^{abc}\mathrm{\Delta }_\gamma \delta _c^\gamma .$$
(38)
Without loss of generality, we can take $`\left|\mathrm{\Delta }_u\right|\left|\mathrm{\Delta }_d\right|\left|\mathrm{\Delta }_s\right|`$. Let $`\mathrm{\Delta }_d/\mathrm{\Delta }_u=x`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_s/\mathrm{\Delta }_u=y`$. Then, the vacuum energy becomes

$$V(\mathrm{\Delta })0.43\frac{\mu ^2}{4\pi ^2}\left|\mathrm{\Delta }_u\right|^2f(x,y),$$
(39)
where $`f(x,y)`$ is a complicate function of $`1x,y1`$ that has a maximum at $`x=1=y`$, $`f(x,y)13.4`$. Therefore, the vacuum energy has a global minimum when $`\mathrm{\Delta }_u=\mathrm{\Delta }_d=\mathrm{\Delta }_s`$, or in terms of the eigenvalues of the gap

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_i=\mathrm{\Delta }_u(1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,2).$$
(40)
Among nine quarks, $`\psi _a^\alpha `$, eight of them have (Majorana) mass $`\mathrm{\Delta }_u`$, forming an octet under $`SU(3)`$, and one of them, a singlet under $`SU(3)`$, has $`2\mathrm{\Delta }_u`$.

Since the condensate is related to the off-diagonal component of the quark propagator at high momentum as, suppressing the color and flavor indices,

$`\psi (\stackrel{}{v}_F,x)\psi (\stackrel{}{v}_F,x)`$ $``$ $`\underset{yx}{lim}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{d}^4l}{(2\pi )^4}e^{il(xy)}\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }(l_{})}{l_{}^2\mathrm{\Delta }^2(l_{})}}`$ (41)
$`=`$ $`\underset{yx}{lim}\left[\delta ^2(\stackrel{}{x}_{}\stackrel{}{y}_{}){\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }(0)}{4\pi ^2|x_{}y_{}|^{\gamma _m}}}+\mathrm{}\right],`$ (42)
where $`\gamma _m`$ is the anomalous dimension of the condensate and the ellipsis are less singular terms. Being proportional to the gap, the condensate is diagonalized in the basis where the gap is diagonalized. Thus, we have shown that in the HDL approximation the true ground state of QCD with three massless flavors at high density is the color-flavor locking phase, $`K_\gamma =K`$ for all $`\gamma =u,d,s`$. The condensate takes

$$\psi _{L}^{}{}_{i\alpha }{}^{a}(\stackrel{}{v}_F,x)\psi _{L}^{}{}_{j\beta }{}^{b}(\stackrel{}{v}_F,x)=\psi _{R}^{}{}_{i\alpha }{}^{a}(\stackrel{}{v}_F,x)\psi _{R}^{}{}_{j\beta }{}^{b}(\stackrel{}{v}_F,x)=ϵ_{ij}ϵ^{abI}ϵ_{\alpha \beta I}K(p_F),$$
(43)
breaking the color symmetry, $`U(1)_{\mathrm{em}}`$, the chiral symmetry, and the baryon number symmetry. The symmetry breaking pattern of the CFL phase is therefore

$$SU(3)_c\times SU(3)_L\times SU(3)_R\times U(1)_{\mathrm{em}}\times U(1)_BSU(3)_V\times U(1)_{\stackrel{~}{Q}}\times Z_2,$$
(44)
where $`SU(3)_V`$ is the diagonal subgroup of three $`SU(3)`$ groups and the generator of $`U(1)_{\stackrel{~}{Q}}`$ is a linear combination of the color hypercharge and $`U(1)_{\mathrm{em}}`$ generator,

$$\stackrel{~}{Q}=\mathrm{cos}\theta Q_{\mathrm{em}}+\mathrm{sin}\theta Y_8,$$
(45)
where $`\mathrm{tan}\theta =e/g_s`$.

## IV Meson mass

In the CFL phase of color superconductors, there are 8 pseudo Nambu-Goldstone (NG) bosons and one genuine NG boson. Since the (pseudo) NG bosons are very light, they constitute the low-lying excitations of the CFL phase, together with the modified photon, which are relevant in the low energy phenomena like the cooling process of color superconductors.

The pseudo NG bosons will get mass due to interactions, that break $`SU(3)`$ chiral symmetry, such as Dirac mass terms  electromagnetic interactions , and instantons . It is important to note that Dirac mass term and intanton effects are suppressed by powers of $`1/\mu `$ at high density since they invlove anti-quarks, while the electromagnetic interaction is not. In this section we derive the meson mass due to the Dirac mass term and the electromagnetic interaction, by matching the vacuum energy shift in microscopic theory (QCD) and the effective theory of mesons, which was used in . But, we present the calculation, using the effective theory constucted in , as was done by Beane et. al . As in , if we introduce the charge conjugated field $`\psi _c=C\overline{\psi }^T`$ with $`C=i\gamma ^0\gamma ^2`$ and decompose the quark field into states ($`\psi _+`$) near the Fermi surface and the states ($`\psi _{}`$) deep in the Dirac sea, the Dirac mass term can be rewritten as

$$m_q\overline{\psi }\psi =\frac{1}{2}m_q\left(\overline{\psi }_+\psi _{}+\overline{\psi }_{}\psi _+\right)+\frac{1}{2}m_q^T\left(\overline{\psi }_{c+}\psi _c+\overline{\psi }_c\psi _{c+}\right),$$
(46)
which becomes, if one integrates out the antiquarks ($`\psi _{}`$ or $`\psi _c`$),

$`m_q\overline{\psi }\psi `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{m_q^2}{2\mu }}\psi _+^{}\widehat{\psi _{}\overline{\psi }_{}}\psi _++{\displaystyle \frac{m_qm_q^T}{2\mu }}\psi _+^{}\widehat{\psi _{}\overline{\psi }_c}\psi _{c+}+\mathrm{},`$ (47)
where $`\widehat{\psi _{}\overline{\psi }_{}}`$ and $`\widehat{\psi _{}\overline{\psi }_c}`$ are the antiquark propagators, propagating into the antiquark field itself or its charge-conjugated field, respectively. Antiquark fields propagate into their charge conjugated fields only if they have a Majorana mass and thus the meson mass due to Dirac mass is zero if the antiquark Majoran mass is zero.

At first one may think that the Majorana mass of antiquarks is zero, since it is energetically not prefered for them to develop a condensate due to the gap ($`\mu `$) to create an antiquark. But, it is shown  that the antiquark fields get a radiative Majorana mass, which is equal to the Cooper-pair gap of quarks near the Fermi surface, since all the symmetries that forbid the Majorana mass term for antiquarks are broken once the Cooper gap is open for the quarks near the Fermi surface.

Having shown that the antiquarks have same Majorana mass as quarks near the Fermi surface, we may write the inverse propagator of the Nambu-Gorkov antiquark field, $`(\psi _{},\psi _c)^T`$, as

$`S_c^1(p)`$ $`=`$ $`i{\displaystyle \frac{1\stackrel{}{\alpha }\stackrel{}{v}_F}{2}}\left(\begin{array}{cc}p_0\gamma _0\stackrel{}{p}\stackrel{}{\gamma }+2\mu \gamma _0& \mathrm{\Delta }^{}\\ \mathrm{\Delta }& p_0\gamma _0+\stackrel{}{p}\stackrel{}{\gamma }2\mu \gamma _0\end{array}\right)`$ (48)
$`=`$ $`i{\displaystyle \frac{1\stackrel{}{\alpha }\stackrel{}{v}_F}{2}}\gamma _0\left(\begin{array}{cc}lV+2\mu & \mathrm{\Delta }^{}\\ \mathrm{\Delta }& l\overline{V}2\mu \end{array}\right),`$ (49)
where the projector $`(1\stackrel{}{\alpha }\stackrel{}{v}_F)/2`$ is to project out the states in the Dirac sea, $`V^\mu =(1.\stackrel{}{v}_F)`$, $`\overline{V}=(1,\stackrel{}{v}_F)`$, and we decompose $`p^\mu =\mu v^\mu +l^\mu `$ with $`v^\mu =(0,\stackrel{}{v}_F)`$ in the second line. Since the states in the Dirac sea can propagate into their charge conjugated states via the radiatively generated Majorana mass term, Eq. (47) becomes

$`m_q\overline{\psi }\psi `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{m_q^2}{2\mu }}\psi _+^{}\left(1{\displaystyle \frac{iV}{2\mu }}\right)\psi _++{\displaystyle \frac{m_qm_q^T}{4\mu ^2}}\psi _+^{}\mathrm{\Delta }\psi _{c+}+\mathrm{},`$ (50)
where $`V^\mu =(1,\stackrel{}{v}_F)`$ and the ellipsis denotes the terms higher order in $`1/\mu `$. Then, the vacuum energy shift due to the Dirac mass term is $`m_q^2\mathrm{\Delta }^2\mathrm{ln}(\mu ^2/\mathrm{\Delta }^2)`$ in the leading order, which has to be matched with the vacuum energy in the meson Lagrangian, $`m_\pi ^2F^2`$ with the pion decay constant $`F\mu `$ . Therefore, one finds the meson mass due to the Dirac mass $`m_\pi ^2m_q^2\mathrm{\Delta }^2/\mu ^2\mathrm{ln}(\mu ^2/\mathrm{\Delta }^2)`$ . The electromagnetic interaction also contributes to the meson mass, since it breaks the $`SU(3)`$ flavor symmetry. Among 8 pseudo Nambu-Goldstone bosons, four of them have the unbrken $`U(1)`$ charge and receive a correction, $`\delta m_\pi 12.7\mathrm{sin}\theta \mathrm{\Delta }\left[\mathrm{ln}(\mu ^2/\mathrm{\Delta }^2)\right]^{1/2}`$, where $`\theta =\mathrm{tan}^1\left(e/g\right)`$ In , the result is a little different from the one obtained in

Finally, the instanton breaks the chiral symmetry and contributes to the meson masss. But, its effect at high density is suppressed by $`\mu ^{14}`$ for three flavors  and thus negligible.

## V Bosonization of the CFL dense QCD

In this CFL phase, the particle spectrum can be precisely mapped into that of the hadronic phase at low density. Observing this map, Schäfer and Wilczek  further conjectured that two phases are in fact continuously connected to each other. The CFL phase at high density is complementary to the hadronic phase at low density. This conjecture was subsequently supported  by showing that quarks in the CFL phase are realized as Skyrmions, called superqualitons, just like baryons are realized as Skyrmions in the hadronic phase.

This phase continuity can be explained heuristically in the following thought experiment. Suppose we inject a hydrogen atom into a CFL color superconductor as in Fig. 3. In the color superconductor, being bombarded by energetic (gapped) quarks, the atom will be ionized and the quarks in the proton will get deconfined to form, for example, a Cooper pair of $`u`$ and $`d`$, leaving the up quark alone.

From this thought experiment we find two things: The baryon number of up quark is same as that of proton, since the CFL vacuum provides the missing two thirds. As the hydrogen atom is neutral in the vacuum, the charge of up quark has to be opposite to that of electron with respect to whatever unbroken charges in the color superconductor. Thereby, the gapped quarks in the CFL phase correspond to baryons in the hadronic phase.

Furthermore, it is possible to bosonize the CFL color superconductor , realizing Skyrme’s original motivation for the Skyrmion . We introduce a bosonic variable,

$$U_{L}^{}{}_{ai}{}^{}(x)\underset{yx}{lim}\frac{\left|xy\right|^{\gamma _m}}{\mathrm{\Delta }(p_F)}ϵ_{abc}ϵ_{ijk}\psi _L^{bj}(\stackrel{}{v}_F,x)\psi _L^{ck}(\stackrel{}{v}_F,y),$$
(51)
where $`\gamma _m`$ ($`\alpha _s`$) is the anomalous dimension of the diquark field. Similarly, we define $`U_R`$ in terms of right-handed quarks to describe the small fluctuations of the condensate of right-handed quarks. Since the bosonic fields, $`U_{L,R}`$, are colored, they will interact with gluons. In fact, the colored massless excitations will constitute the longitudinal components of gluons through Higgs mechanism. Among the small fluctuations of condensates, the colorless excitations correspond to genuine Nambu-Goldstone (NG) bosons, which can be described by a color singlet combination of $`U_{L,R}`$ , given as

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }_i^jU_{Lai}U_R^{aj}.$$
(52)
The NG bosons transform under the $`SU(3)_L\times SU(3)_R`$ chiral symmetry as

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }g_L\mathrm{\Sigma }g_R^{},\mathrm{with}g_{L,R}SU(3)_{L,R}.$$
(53)
Since the chiral symmetry is explicitly broken by the current quark mass, the instanton effects, and the electromagnetic interaction, the NG bosons will get mass, which has been calculated by various groups . Here we focus on the meson mass due to the current strange quark mass ($`m_s)`$, since it will be dominant for the intermediate density. Then, the meson mass term is simplified as

$$_m=C\mathrm{tr}(M^T\mathrm{\Sigma })\mathrm{tr}(M^{}\mathrm{\Sigma }^{})+O(M^4),$$
(54)
where $`M=\mathrm{diag}(0,0,m_s)`$ and $`C\mathrm{\Delta }^4/\mu ^2\mathrm{ln}(\mu ^2/\mathrm{\Delta }^2)`$. (Note that in general there will be two more mass terms quadratic in $`M`$. But, they all vanish if we neglect the current mass of up and down quarks and also the small color-sextet component of the Cooper pair .)

Thus, the low-energy effective Lagrangian density for the bosonic fields in the CFL phase can be written as

$`_{\mathrm{eff}}=_g+[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}F^2\mathrm{tr}(_\mu U_L^{}^\mu U_L)+n_L_{WZW}+(LR)]+_m+g_sG_\mu ^AJ^{\mu A}+\mathrm{},`$ (55)
where $`_g`$ is the Lagrangian of Higgsed gluons, $`G_\mu ^A`$, and the ellipsis denotes the higher order terms in the derivative expansion, including mixing terms between $`U_L`$ and $`U_R`$. The gluons couple to the bosonic fields through a minimal coupling with a conserved current, given as

$$J^{A\mu }=\frac{i}{2}F^2\mathrm{Tr}U_L^1T^A^\mu U_L+\frac{1}{24\pi ^2}ϵ^{\mu \nu \rho \sigma }\mathrm{Tr}T^AU_L^1_\nu U_LU_L^1_\rho U_LU_L^1_\sigma U_L+(LR)+\mathrm{},$$
(56)
where the ellipsis denotes the currents from the higher order derivative terms in Eq. (55). $`F`$ is a quantity analogous to the pion decay constant, calculated to be $`F\mu `$ in the CFL color superconductor . The Wess-Zumino-Witten (WZW) term  is described by the action

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_{WZW}\mathrm{d}^4x_{WZW}=\frac{i}{240\pi ^2}_𝖬\mathrm{d}^5rϵ^{\mu \nu \alpha \beta \gamma }\mathrm{tr}(l_\mu l_\nu l_\alpha l_\beta l_\gamma )$$
(57)
where $`l_\mu =U_L^{}_\mu U_L`$ and the integration is defined on a five-dimensional manifold $`𝖬=VS^1I`$ with the three dimensional space $`V`$, the compactified time $`S^1`$, and a unit interval $`I`$ needed for the local form of WZW term. The coefficients of the WZW terms in the effective Lagrangian (55) have been shown to be $`n_{L,R}=1`$ by matching the flavor anomalies , which is later confirmed by an explicit calculation .

Now, let us try to describe the CFL color superconductor in terms of the bosonic variables. We start with the effective Lagrangian (55), which is good at low energy, without putting in the quark fields. As in the Skyrme model of baryons, we anticipate the gaped quarks come out as solitons, made of the bosonic degrees of freedom. That the Skyrme picture can be realized in the CFL color superconductor is already shown in , but there the mass of the soliton is not properly calculated. Here, by identifying the correct ground state of the CFL superconductor in the bosonic description, we find the superqualitons have same quantum numbers as quarks with mass of the order of gap, showing that they are really the gaped quarks in the CFL color superconductor. Furthermore, upon quantizing the zero modes of the soliton, we find that high spin excitations of the soliton have energy of order of $`\mu `$, way beyond the scale where the effective bosonic description is applicable, which we interpret as the absence of high-spin quarks, in agreement with the fermionic description. It is interesting to note that, as we will see below, by calculating the soliton mass in the bosonic description, one finds the coupling and the chemical potential dependence of the Cooper-pair gap, at least numerically, which gives us a complementary way, if not better, of estimating the gap.

As the baryon number (or the quark number) is conserved, though spontaneously broken, the ground state in the bosonic description should have the same baryon (or quark) number as the ground state in the fermionic description. Under the $`U(1)_Q`$ quark number symmetry, the bosonic fields transform as

$$U_{L,R}e^{i\theta Q}U_{L,R}e^{i\theta Q}=e^{2i\theta }U_{L,R},$$
(58)
where $`Q`$ is the quark number operator, given in the bosonic description as

$$Q=i\mathrm{d}^3x\frac{F^2}{4}\mathrm{Tr}[U_L^{}_tU_L_tU_L^{}U_L+(LR)],$$
(59)
neglecting the quark number coming from the WZW term, since the ground state has no nontrivial topology. The energy in the bosonic description is

$$E=\mathrm{d}^3x\frac{F^2}{4}\mathrm{Tr}\left[\right|_tU_L|^2+|\stackrel{}{}U_L|^2+(LR)]+E_m+\delta E,$$
(60)
where $`E_m`$ is the energy due to meson mass and $`\delta E`$ is the energy coming from the higher derivative terms. Assuming the meson mass energy is positive and $`E_m+\delta E0`$, which is reasonable because $`\mathrm{\Delta }/F1`$, we can take, dropping the positive terms due to the spatial derivative,

$$E\mathrm{d}^3x\frac{F^2}{4}\mathrm{Tr}\left[\right|_tU_L|^2+(LR)](E_Q).$$
(61)
Since for any number $`\alpha `$

$$\mathrm{d}^3x\mathrm{Tr}\left[\right|U_L+\alpha i_tU_L|^2+(LR)]0,$$
(62)
we get a following Schwartz inequality,

$$Q^2IE_Q,$$
(63)
where we defined

$$I=\frac{F^2}{4}\mathrm{d}^3x\mathrm{Tr}[U_LU_L^{}+(LR)].$$
(64)
Note that the lower bound in Eq. (63) is saturated for $`E_Q=\omega Q`$ or

$$U_{L,R}=e^{i\omega t}\mathrm{with}\omega =\frac{Q}{I}.$$
(65)
The ground state of the color superconductor, which has the lowest energy for a given quark number $`Q`$, is nothing but a so-called $`Q`$-matter, or the interior of a very large $`Q`$-ball . Since in the fermionic description the system has the quark number $`Q=\mu ^3/\pi ^2\mathrm{d}^3x=\mu ^3/\pi ^2I/F^2`$, we find, using $`F0.209\mu `$ ,

$$\omega =\frac{1}{\pi ^2}\left(\frac{\mu }{F}\right)^3F2.32\mu .$$
(66)
In passing, we note that $`\omega `$ is numerically very close to $`4\pi F`$. The ground state of the system in the bosonic description is a $`Q`$-matter whose energy per unit quark number is $`\omega `$. Now, let us suppose we consider creating a $`Q=1`$ state out of the ground state. In the fermionic description, this corresponds that we excite a gaped quark in the Fermi sea into a free state, which costs energy at least $`2\mathrm{\Delta }`$. In the bosonic description, this amounts to creating a superqualiton out of the $`Q`$-matter, while reducing the quark number of the $`Q`$-matter by one. Therefore, since we gain energy $`\omega `$ by reducing the quark number of the $`Q`$-matter by one, the energy cost to create a gapped quark from the ground state is

$$\delta =M_Q\omega ,$$
(67)
where $`M_Q`$ is the energy of the superqualiton configuration. Since $`M_Q4\pi F`$, we see that the energy of the superqualiton configuration is almost canceled out by $`\omega `$ to give the gap much smaller than $`4\pi F`$ or $`\mu `$. Varing the strange quark mass, we find numerically that the twice of u- and s-superqualiton masses are given as

$$\begin{array}{ccc}\mathrm{\Delta }_u=0.079\times 4\pi F,\hfill & \mathrm{\Delta }_s=0.081\times 4\pi F,\hfill & \mathrm{for}m_K/F=0.1\hfill \\ \mathrm{\Delta }_u=0.079\times 4\pi F,\hfill & \mathrm{\Delta }_s=0.089\times 4\pi F,\hfill & \mathrm{for}m_K/F=0.3\hfill \\ \mathrm{\Delta }_u=0.079\times 4\pi F,\hfill & \mathrm{\Delta }_s=0.109\times 4\pi F,\hfill & \mathrm{for}m_K/F=0.8.\hfill \end{array}$$
(68)
From the relation that $`2\mathrm{\Delta }=M_Q\omega `$, we can estimate numerically the coupling and the chemical potential dependence of the Cooper gap . This gives an alternative way of calculating the Cooper gap, if not better.

## VI neutrino interaction in CFL

To discuss the interaction of neutrinos in color superconductors , we first note that gluons mix with weak gauge bosons, since the diquark condensates in color superconductors carry not only a color but also a weak charge.

Consider the color-gluon annihilation into the lepton pair, $`l\overline{l}`$, as an example of weak neutral current interactions:

$`\stackrel{~}{V}^++\stackrel{~}{V}^{}\stackrel{~}{Z}l\overline{l},`$ (69)
$`\stackrel{~}{V}^++\stackrel{~}{V}^{}\stackrel{~}{V}_0l\overline{l}.`$ (70)
The coupling at the $`\stackrel{~}{V}\stackrel{~}{V}\stackrel{~}{Z}`$ vertex in the process mediated by $`\stackrel{~}{Z}`$, Eq. (69), is given by

$`f\mathrm{cos}^2\delta {\displaystyle \frac{4}{\sqrt{3}}}{\displaystyle \frac{g_sg}{g^2+g^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{\sigma ^2}{v^2}}\mathrm{cos}\theta _W{\displaystyle \frac{4}{\sqrt{3}}}g\mathrm{cos}^3\theta _W({\displaystyle \frac{M_V}{M_W}})^2`$ (71)
which gives a suppression factor

$`({\displaystyle \frac{M_V}{M_W}})^2`$ (72)
compared to the conventional $`\nu \overline{\nu }`$ production. The suppression factor in the process mediated by $`\stackrel{~}{V}_0`$, Eq. (70), due to the vertex $`\stackrel{~}{V}_0l\overline{l}`$ is given by

$`\mathrm{sin}\beta g/g_s.`$ (73)
The propagator in the low energy limit $`Q^2<<M_V^2`$ is greater than in Eq. (69), i.e.,

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{Q^2M_V^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{M_V^2}}.`$ (74)
However the amplitude for fusion is enhanced at the strong interaction vertex, $`\stackrel{~}{V}\stackrel{~}{V}\stackrel{~}{V}_0`$, by a factor of $`f`$, and we get the factor for the amplitude

$`Q_fg{\displaystyle \frac{g}{g_s}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{M_V^2}}g_s=Q_f{\displaystyle \frac{g^2}{M_V^2}}`$ (75)
with the modified elctric charge $`Q_f`$. One can now see that the gluon fusion into the charged flavor $`l\overline{l}`$ pair is greater than the weak neutral current by a factor of $`(\frac{M_V}{M_W})^210^6`$ and hence comparable to photon mediated processes . However this enhancement does not apply to gluon-mediated $`\nu \overline{\nu }`$ processes because $`Q_f`$ is zero for neutrino. In general, for the neutral current with neutrinos, the contribution from color-gluon mediated processes in the broken phase vanishes since the amplitude is proportional to $`Q_f`$(neutrino) which is $`=0`$. We arrive at the same conclusion for $`q\overline{q}\nu \overline{\nu }`$.

The charged current weak interaction in the process mediated by $`\stackrel{~}{V}_0`$ is also comparable to the ordinary weak interaction strength for the neutrino-quark interaction in the low-energy limit. Consider the following processes in matter,

$`q+l`$ $``$ $`q^{}+\nu (\overline{\nu }),`$ (76)
$`q`$ $``$ $`q^{}+l+\nu (\overline{\nu }).`$ (77)
As in the gluon annihilation processes, there are two amplitudes that can be decomposed into three parts: quark gauge boson vertex, propagator, gauge boson-lepton-neutrino vertex,

$`qq^{}\stackrel{~}{W}^\pm `$ $``$ $`\stackrel{~}{W}^\pm l\nu \stackrel{~}{W}^\pm ,`$ (78)
$`qq^{}\stackrel{~}{V}^\pm `$ $``$ $`\stackrel{~}{V}^\pm l\nu \stackrel{~}{V}^\pm .`$ (79)
In the low energy limit, Eq. (78) gives the ordinary weak amplitude

$`{\displaystyle \frac{g^2}{M_W^2}}.`$ (80)
It is easy to see that the contribution of the color gauge-boson-mediated process, Eq. (79), also gives an amplitude comparable to that of the $`W^\pm `$ mediated process,

$`g{\displaystyle \frac{g}{g_s}}({\displaystyle \frac{M_V}{M_W}})^2{\displaystyle \frac{1}{M_V^2}}g_s{\displaystyle \frac{g^2}{M_W^2}}.`$ (81)
It should be noted however that the quark decay mediated by $`\stackrel{~}{V}_0`$ in Eq. (77) cannot take place because of the energy conservation: the quarks with different colors but with same flavor have the same mass. Therefore the neutrino production mediated by the color-changing weak current is limited to the process in Eq. (76)

$`q_r+e^{}`$ $``$ $`q_b+\nu `$ (82)
$`q_b+e^+`$ $``$ $`q_r+\overline{\nu }.`$ (83)
To keep the system in a color-singlet state in the cooling process, these processes should occur equally to compensate the color change in each process. It implies that these processes depend on the abundance of positrons in the system. At finite temperature in the cooling period, it is expected that there will be a substantial amount of positrons as well as electrons as long as the temperature is not far below $`MeV`$. Of course the additional enhancement of the neutrino production due to the CFL phase depends on the abundance of positrons in the system which depends mainly on the temperature. If confined colored gluons are present in the matter in the CFL phase, the same amplitude can be obtained in Eq. (79) when $`qq^{}`$ is replaced with $`VV^{}`$.

The result obtained above can be summarized as predicting an enhancement of the effective four-point coupling constant for the neutrino production process in the low energy limit. The enhancement due to the neutrino-color interaction is suppressed by factors of $`e^{\mathrm{\Delta }/T}`$ or $`e^{M_V/T}`$, since it depends on the unpaired excitations above gap which can participate into neutrino-color interaction. Hence for the cooling process at low temperatures as $`10^9`$K it is not so effective. However during the early stage of proto-neutron star the temperature is expected to be high enough $`2050`$MeV  to see the effect of the enhancement due to color excitations.

Let us now consider the weak decay of light quasi-quarks, described by the four-Fermi interaction:

$`_{Fermi}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{G_F}{\sqrt{2}}}{\displaystyle \underset{\stackrel{}{v}_F}{}}\overline{\psi }_L(\stackrel{}{v}_F,x)\gamma ^\mu \psi _L(\stackrel{}{v}_F,x)\overline{\nu }_L(x)\gamma _\mu \nu _L(x)`$ (84)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{G_F}{\sqrt{2}}}{\displaystyle \underset{\stackrel{}{v}_F}{}}\psi _L^{}(\stackrel{}{v}_F,x)\psi _L(\stackrel{}{v}_F,x)\overline{\nu }_L(x)v/\nu _L(x)`$ (85)
where $`G_F=1.166\times 10^5\mathrm{GeV}^2`$ is the Fermi constant and $`\psi `$ denotes the quasi-quark near the Fermi surface, projected from the quark field $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ as in ,

$$\psi (\stackrel{}{v}_F,x)=\frac{1+\stackrel{}{\alpha }\stackrel{}{v}_F}{2}e^{i\stackrel{}{v}_F\stackrel{}{x}}\mathrm{\Psi }(x).$$
(86)
Since the four-Fermi interaction of quarks with opposite momenta are marginally relevant and gets substantially enhanced at low energy, it may have significant corrections to the couplings to quarks of those weakly interacting particles :

$`\delta _{\nu q}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{G_F}{\sqrt{2}}}\psi _L^{}(\stackrel{}{v}_F,x)\psi _L(\stackrel{}{v}_F,x)\overline{\nu }_L(x)v/\nu _L(x)`$ (88)
$`\times {\displaystyle \frac{ig_{\overline{3}}}{2M_V^2}}\delta _{tv;us}^A{\displaystyle _y}\left[\overline{\psi }_t(\stackrel{}{v}_F^{},y)\gamma ^0\psi _s(\stackrel{}{v}_F^{},y)\overline{\psi }_v(\stackrel{}{v}_F^{},y)\gamma ^0\psi _u(\stackrel{}{v}_F^{},y)\right]`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{4}{3}}{\displaystyle \frac{g_{\overline{3}}}{2\pi }}{\displaystyle \frac{G_F}{\sqrt{2}}}\psi _L^{}(\stackrel{}{v}_F,x)\psi _L(\stackrel{}{v}_F,x)\overline{\nu }_L(x)\overline{v}\gamma \nu _L(x),`$ (89)
where $`\stackrel{}{v}_F`$ and $`\stackrel{}{v}_F^{}`$ are summed over and $`g_{\overline{3}}`$ is the value of the marginal four-quark coupling at the screening mass scale $`M`$. In terms of the renormalization group (RG) equation at a scale $`E`$

$$\frac{dG_F(t)}{dt}=\frac{4}{3}\frac{g_{\overline{3}}(t)}{2\pi }G_F(t),$$
(90)
where $`t=\mathrm{ln}E`$. The scale dependence of the marginal four-quark coupling in the color anti-triplet channel is calculated in . At $`E\mu `$

$$\overline{g}_{\overline{3}}(t)\frac{4\pi }{11}\alpha _s(t).$$
(91)
Since $`\alpha _s(t)=2\pi /(11t)`$, we get

$$G_F(E)G_F(\mu )\left(\frac{\mu }{E}\right)^{\frac{16\pi }{363}}.$$
(92)
Since the RG evolution stops at scales lower than the gap, the low energy effective Fermi coupling in dense matter is therefore

$$G_F^{\mathrm{eff}}=G_F\left(\frac{\mu }{\mathrm{\Delta }}\right)^{\frac{16\pi }{363}}.$$
(93)
We emphasize that this enhancement applies equally to the $`\beta `$ decay of quarks and other neutrino production processes described in the previous section.

At asymptotic density and low temperature ($`T0`$), the relevant excitations are quasi-quarks that are not Cooper-paired, and 17 Nambu-Goldstone bosons. All other massive particles, Higgsed gluons and other massive excitations are expected to be out of thermal equilibrium and decoupled. Thus the main cooling processes must be the emission of weakly interacting light particles like neutrinos or other (weakly interacting) exotic light particles (e.g. axions) from the quasi-quarks and Nambu-Goldstone bosons in the thermal bath.

For the neutrino emissivity from quasi quarks, the so-called Urca process is relevant. The neutrino emissivity by the direct Urca process in quark matter, which is possible for most cases in quark matter, was calculated by Iwamoto . For the CFL superconcductor, we expect the calculation goes in parallel and the neutrino emissivity is

$$ϵ_{\mathrm{direct}}\alpha _s\rho Y_e^{1/3}T^6,$$
(94)
where $`\rho `$ is the density, $`T`$ is the temperature of the quark matter, and $`Y_e`$ is the ratio between the electron and baryon density. On the other hand, the neutrino emissivity by the modified Urca process, which is the dominant process in the standard cooling of neutron stars , is suppressed by $`\left(\mathrm{\Delta }/\mu \right)^4`$, since the pion coupling to quarks is given by $`g_{qq\pi }\mathrm{\Delta }/\mu `$  . Thus, the neutrino emmisivity by the modified Urca process in the CFL quark matter is greatly suppressed in the CFL quark matter, compared to normal quark matter. Futhermore, since the pion-pion interaction in the CFL quark matter are also suppressed by $`\mathrm{\Delta }/\mu `$ , we note that all the low energy excitations in the CFL quark matter are extremely weakly coupled. But, since most excitations in the CFL quark matter are gapped and frozen out, the CFL quark matter has a quite small heat capacity and cools down very rapidly at temperatures lower than the gap .

Together with the general enhancement of the effective four-point coupling constant in RG analysis, the enhancement of the neutrino production implies that the cooling process speeds up as the CFL phase sets in dense hadronic matter near the critical temperature. But, at temperature much below the critical temperature, the interaction of quasi-quarks and pions and kaons is extremely weak, suppressed by $`\mathrm{\Delta }/\mu `$, and the CFL quark matter cools down extremely rapidly.

For a realistic calculation of the cooling rate of compact stars, we need to also consider the neutrino propagation in the CFL matter before the neutrinos come out of the system. A recent study  suggests that the presence of the CFL phase can accelerate the cooling process because neutrino interactions with matter are reduced in the presence of a superconducting gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$. However this result is subject to modification by the effect of additional interactions – not taken into account in this work – mediated by the colored gluons on the quark polarization. It would be interesting to see how the enhancement of the neutrino production correlates with the neutrino-medium interaction. This is one of the physically relevant questions on how the enhanced neutrino interaction could affect neutron-star(proto neutron star) cooling following supernova explosion. This issue is currently under investigation.

## VII Conclusion

I have discussed some aspects of the exciting recent developments in color superconductivity in high density quark matter. I have calculated the Cooper pair gap and the critical points at high density where magnetic gluons are not screened. The ground state of high density QCD with three light flavors is shown to be a color-flavor locking state, which can be mapped into the low-density hadronic phase. The meson mass at the CFL superconductor is also calculated. The CFL color superconductor is bosonized, where the Fermi sea is identified as a $`Q`$-matter and the gapped quarks as topological excitations, called superqualitons, of mesons. Finally, as an application of color supercoductivity, I have discussed the neutrino interactions in the CFL color superconductor.

I wish to thank the organizers of the 40th Zakopane School of Theoretical Physics, June 2000 for the wonderful school, and also the oranizers of Cosmo-2000, September 2000, Cheju, Korea. I am grateful to S.-T. Hong, T. Lee, Y.-J. Park, D.-P. Min, V. Miransky, M. Rho, I. Shovkovy, L. C. R. Wijewardhana, and I. Zahed for the collaborations on the works described here. This work was supported by Korea Research Foundation Grant (KRF-2000-015-DP0069).


text:
# An exact renormalization group approach to frustrated magnets

## I Frustrated Magnets

One of the great challenges of present-day condensed matter physics is to understand the effects of competing interactions – frustration – in three-dimensional spin systems. However, after twenty five years of investigations, the question of the nature of the universality class for the phase transition of the simplest frustrated model, the classical antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model on a triangular lattice (AFHT model), is still strongly debated . The main feature of this system is that, due to frustration, its ground state is given by a configuration in which the spins have a non-collinear order: on an elementary triangular plaquette, they point at 120 one from another. A consequence of this non-collinear order is that, contrary to the case of non-frustrated spin systems, the microscopic order parameter is no longer a single vector but a matrix, built from two orthonormal vectors $`(\stackrel{}{\varphi }_1,\stackrel{}{\varphi }_2)`$, playing a role similar to the staggered magnetization in non-frustrated antiferromagnetic systems. This implies a symmetry breaking scheme in which the group of spatial rotation is fully broken. In the case of the AFHT model it is given by $`O(3)O(2)O(2)`$ . This situation raises the question of the nature of the phase transition for frustrated magnets in three dimensions. Experiments performed on materials supposed to belong to the AFHT universality class exhibit a critical behavior with exponents differing from those of the standard $`O(N)`$ universality class . However the experimental situation calls for several important remarks. First, the critical exponents differ significantly from one material to another and also with those obtained by Monte Carlo simulations performed either directly on the AFHT model or on related models (see ref. for a review). Second, for a given material, the scaling relations are violated at least by two standard deviations. These results are manifestly not compatible with the existence of a true universality.

## II Perturbative Field Theoretical Context

From the theoretical point of view, this state of affairs raises the question of the ability of the field theoretical formalism to explain the experimental and numerical situation. As in the $`O(N)`$ case, mainly two kinds of approaches have been used to tackle with this problem. We now display the results of these studies.

### A The Non-Linear Sigma Model Approach

The first approach consists in a low-temperature expansion performed around two dimensions on the suitable field theory, the $`O(3)O(2)/O(2)`$ Non-Linear Sigma (NL$`\sigma `$) model  which is obtained by expressing the interaction between spins in terms of the Goldstone modes, the excitations associated to the transverse fluctuations of the magnetization. This is realized, as usual, by using the geometrical constraints of the ground state – here the orthonormality of $`\stackrel{}{\varphi }_1`$ and $`\stackrel{}{\varphi }_2`$ – to get rid of the irrelevant – longitudinal – degrees of freedom. Formally, the resulting partition function writes:

$$Z=D\pi \mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{1}{2}d^dxg_{ij}(\pi )_\mu \pi ^i_\mu \pi ^j\right]$$
(1)
where the $`\pi ^i`$’s represent the – three – Goldstone modes of the model, $`g_{ij}(\pi )`$ encoding their interaction. The expression (1) is then used to evaluate the renormalization of the interaction between the Goldstone modes in a double expansion in the temperature $`T`$ and in $`ϵ=d2`$. In the case of frustrated magnets, the result of this study is that there exists, above two dimensions, a stable fixed point . At this fixed point, the symmetry breaking scheme is enlarged from $`O(3)O(2)/O(2)`$ to $`O(3)O(3)/O(3)`$. An important point is that the renormalization group (RG) properties of a NL$`\sigma `$ model depend only on the geometry of the order parameter space – the coset $`G/H`$ – viewed as a manifold equipped with the metric $`g_{ij}(\pi )`$ . In particular, the $`\beta `$ functions for the coupling constants entering in the model are given in terms of geometrical quantities on $`G/H`$ like Ricci – $`R_{ij}`$ – and Riemann – $`R_i^{pqr}`$ – tensors on the manifold :

$$\beta _{ij}(g)=\frac{g_{ij}}{l}=ϵg_{ij}\frac{1}{2\pi }R_{ij}\frac{1}{8\pi ^2}R_i^{pqr}R_{jpqr}.$$
(2)
This implies that the RG properties depend only on the $`\mathrm{𝑙𝑜𝑐𝑎𝑙}`$ properties of $`G/H`$: the Lie algebras of the symmetry groups of the high and low temperature phases. As a consequence, they are insensitive to its global structure – topology – and to the representation used to realized the symmetry breaking scheme. It is known that the manifold $`O(3)O(3)/O(3)`$ has the same local structure as $`O(4)/O(3)`$ on which is built the NL$`\sigma `$ model relevant to the four-component non-frustrated vector model. As seen from the NL$`\sigma `$ model calculations, the two above theories are thus equivalent to all orders. Accordingly, the critical properties of the the AFHT model between two and four dimensions should be governed by the standard $`O(4)/O(3)`$ universality class . This is however in strong disagreement with both experimental and numerical results as well as the weak-coupling analysis of the Landau-Ginzburg-Wilson (LGW) model of frustrated magnets around four dimensions.

### B LGW model approach

An alternative approach to that of the NL$`\sigma `$ model is to consider a suitable LGW representation of the physics of frustrated magnets. This can be obtained, for instance, by relaxing, via a potential, the constraints defining the ground state:

$$Z=D\stackrel{}{\varphi }_1D\stackrel{}{\varphi }_2e^{{\scriptscriptstyle d^Dx{\scriptscriptstyle \frac{1}{2}}\left(\stackrel{}{\varphi _1}^2+\stackrel{}{\varphi _2}^2\right)}+\frac{m^2}{2}(\stackrel{}{\varphi _1}^2+\stackrel{}{\varphi _2}^2)+u(\stackrel{}{\varphi _1}^2+\stackrel{}{\varphi _2}^2)^2+v(\stackrel{}{\varphi }_1\stackrel{}{\varphi }_2)^2}$$
(3)
The $`\beta `$ functions for the couplings $`u`$ and $`v`$ are determined in a double expansion in these couplings and in $`ϵ=4d`$. The result of this analysis, at dominant order , is that the RG equations obtained have no stable fixed point.

### C A critical appraisal

Frustrated magnets thus present a situation in which, contrary to the $`O(N)`$ case, the different perturbative approaches performed around the lower and upper critical dimensions conflict when naively extrapolated to three dimensions. Since there is no indication that any of these different perturbative results should fail in their respective domain of validity – i.e. for small $`ϵ=d2`$ and small $`ϵ=4d`$ – this situation raises two problems. First, a practical one, which is the determination of the critical behaviour in three dimensions. An high-order double expansion in the coupling constants and in $`ϵ=4d`$ or a direct perturbative computation in three dimensions, which are both possible on the LGW model, can, a priori, deal with such a question. This depends, however, on the ability to extract reliable predictions out of the asymptotic series obtained, for example, by Borel resummation. But there is no general answer to this question. In fact, it now appears, from several recent studies, that in the case of frustrated magnets the summability of the series is weak, leading to inaccurate or ambiguous results . A second, and more fundamental, problem is the question of the matching between the predictions of the two field theoretical perturbative approaches: how can the existence of a non trivial fixed point around two dimensions be reconciled with the absence of such a fixed point around four dimensions ? Such a problem is, in fact, common to several field theories, relevant for type II superconductors, electroweak-phase transitions, smectic liquid cristal, He3, etc. In this sense, the situation observed in the vectorial $`O(N)`$ model where a non trivial fixed point exists everywhere between two and four dimensions appears to be the exception rather than the rule. Moreover, in the case of frustrated systems one encounters a more striking problem: there is an incompatibility between the symmetries of the NL$`\sigma `$ and LGW models. Indeed, as said above, at the fixed point the symmetry of the NL$`\sigma `$ model action is enlarged to $`O(4)`$, a phenomenon that cannot occur within the LGW perturbative approach. This raises serious doubts on the perturbative analysis of the LGW model away from $`d=4`$. Reciprocally, the perturbative analysis of the NL$`\sigma `$ model, based on a Goldstone mode expansion, predicts an $`O(4)/O(3)`$ fixed point, in contradiction with the perturbative LGW results and the experimental and numerical situation in $`d=3`$. All this suggests that nonperturbative features could play a major role and thus imposes to go beyond the standard perturbative approaches.

## III Exact Renormalization Group Approach

To clarify this situation we have employed an approach based on the concept of effective average action , $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_k[\varphi ]`$, which is a coarse grained free energy where only fluctuations with momenta $`qk`$ have been integrated out. The field $`\varphi `$ stands here for an average order parameter at the – running – scale $`k`$, the analog of a magnetization at this scale. In the limit $`k0`$, all modes have been taken into account and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_k`$ identifies with the usual effective action $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. At the scale $`k=\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ – the overall cut-off – no fluctuation has been integrated and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_k`$ identifies with the microscopic action. The $`k`$-dependence of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_k`$ is controlled by an exact evolution equation :

$$\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_k}{t}=\frac{1}{2}\text{Tr}\left\{(\mathrm{\Gamma }_k^{(2)}+R_k)^1\frac{R_k}{t}\right\},$$
(4)
where $`t=\mathrm{ln}k/\mathrm{\Lambda }`$. The trace has to be understood as a momentum integral as well as a summation over internal indices. In Eq.(4), $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_k^{(2)}`$ is the exact field-dependent inverse propagator – i.e. the second derivative of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_k`$ – and $`R_k`$ is the effective infrared cut-off which suppresses the propagation of modes with momenta $`q<k`$. A convenient cut-off is provided by: $`R_k(q)=Z_kq^2/(\mathrm{exp}(q^2/k^2)1)`$, where $`Z_k`$ is the field renormalization. The effective average action $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_k`$ is a functional invariant under the symmetry group of the system and thus includes all powers of all invariants – and their derivatives – built from the average order parameter. Thus, Eq.(4) is a nonlinear functional equation, too difficult to be solved exactly in general. Therefore $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_k`$ must be truncated. One – fruitful – possibility, is to perform an expansion of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_k`$ around the minimum in order to keep a finite number of monomials in the invariants while including the most relevant derivative terms . We have considered the following truncation :

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_k=d^dx\left\{\frac{Z_k}{2}\varphi _{ab}\varphi _{ab}+\frac{\omega _k}{4}(ϵ_{ab}\varphi _{ca}\varphi _{cb})^2+\frac{\lambda _k}{4}\left(\frac{\rho }{2}\kappa _k\right)^2+\frac{\mu _k}{4}\tau \right\}$$
(5)
where $`\{\omega _k,\lambda _k,\kappa _k,\mu _k,Z_k\}`$ are the coupling constants that parametrize the evolution of the model with the scale, while $`\rho =\text{Tr}^t\varphi \varphi `$ and $`\tau =\frac{1}{2}\text{Tr}(^t\varphi \varphi )^2\frac{1}{4}(\text{Tr}^t\varphi \varphi )^2`$ are the two independent $`O(N)O(2)`$ invariants built from the average order parameter. Note that, since we have considered the generalization of the initial Heisenberg spin system to $`N`$-component spins, the order parameter consists in a real $`N\times 2`$ matrix $`\varphi _{ab}`$. Apart from the “current term” $`(ϵ_{ab}\varphi _{ca}\varphi _{cb})^2`$ – the terms in (5) are those appearing in the usual LGW action that realizes the symmetry breaking scheme of frustrated magnets. Indeed for $`\lambda _k`$ and $`\mu _k0`$, the minimum of the action is realized by a configuration of the form $`\varphi _{ab}^{min}=\sqrt{\kappa _k}R_{ab}`$, where $`R_{ab}`$ is a matrix built with two orthonormal $`N`$-component vectors. The symmetry of this minimum is a product of a diagonal $`O(2)`$ group and a residual $`O(N2)`$ group. The symmetry breaking scheme is thus $`O(N)O(2)O(N2)O(2)_{diag}`$. Note that for $`\varphi _{ab}=\varphi _{ab}^{min}`$ one has: $`\rho =2\kappa _k`$ and $`\tau =0`$ so that Eq.(5) corresponds indeed to a quartic expansion around the minimum. At this minimum, the spectrum of the model, consists in $`2N3`$ Goldstone modes and three massive modes: one singlet of mass $`m_1=\kappa _k\lambda _k`$ and one doublet of mass $`m_2=\kappa _k\mu _k`$ which correspond to fluctuations of the relative angle and of the norms of the two vectors $`\stackrel{}{\varphi }_1`$ and $`\stackrel{}{\varphi }_2`$. Let us finally stress that, without the current term, the truncation Eq.(5) is however not sufficient in our case. This term plays a crucial role since, for $`N=3`$, it allows the model to enlarge its symmetry from $`O(3)O(2)`$ to $`O(3)O(3)O(4)`$ at the fixed point, above $`d=2`$. The current term is systematically discarded in the perturbative treatment of the LGW model around four dimensions, for the – correct – reason that it is power-counting irrelevant. Here we can include it in our ansatz since it is anyway present in the full effective action $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_k`$. In fact, we must include it since it becomes relevant somewhere between two and four dimensions, the formalism we use being in charge to decide where it is important.

We have derived the flow equations for the different coupling constants $`\kappa _k`$, $`\lambda _k`$, $`\mu _k`$, $`\omega _k`$ and $`Z_k`$ using Eq.(4) and Eq.(5. The explicit recursion equations for the dimensionless renormalized coupling constants $`g_i^r`$ are too lengthy to be displayed here and not particularly illuminating . Their general structure is given by:

$$\frac{dg_i^r}{dt}=Dg_i^r+F_i[\{g_j^r\},\{T_j[m_j^r]\}]$$
(6)
where $`D`$ stand for the dimension – including the anomalous dimension – of the coupling $`g_i^r`$. In Eq.(6), the functions $`F_i`$ involve the whole set of coupling constants $`\{g_j^r\}`$. More important for our purpose is that the flow equations also involve the whole spectrum – Goldstone as well as massive excitations – of the theory. These masses occur as the arguments of some “threshold” functions $`\{T_j\}`$ that govern the coupling or decoupling of the massive degrees of freedom. This is precisely this aspect that allows the method to go beyond the pure Goldstone mode expansion performed with the NL$`\sigma `$ model around $`d=2`$.

In practice, we have studied the fixed point structure of the flow equations (6) everywhere between two and four dimensions. Immediately around two dimensions, the fixed point masses $`m_1^r`$ and $`m_2^r`$ diverge as $`1/ϵ`$. This means a decoupling of the excitations associated to the fluctuations of the modulus and of the relative angle of $`\stackrel{}{\varphi }_1`$ and $`\stackrel{}{\varphi }_2`$. The physics is, as expected, fully controlled by the Goldstone modes. The flow equations (6) then degenerate to those of the $`O(N)O(2)O(N2)O(2)_{diag}`$ NL$`\sigma `$ model at one loop. For $`N=3`$, they admit a fixed point for which the model is $`O(4)`$ symmetric, attesting the validity of the perturbative NL$`\sigma `$ model approach. However, the flow equations actually admit another – unstable – fixed point, absent in the NL$`\sigma `$ model approach, which moves toward the stable one while $`d`$ is increased. At a critical dimension $`d_c2.87`$, the two fixed points collapse and disappear. Above $`d_c`$ no other stable fixed point has been found, in agreement with the LGW approach around four dimensions. Note also that we have checked that, around four dimensions, an expansion of our equations in powers of the coupling constants allows to recover exactly the one-loop RG equations found within the LGW approach. The transition in $`d=3`$ is thus, rigorously speaking, first order. However, the proximity of $`d_c`$ with $`d=3`$ lets open the possibility of a very weak first order phase transition in this dimension. We have checked that there indeed exists, in $`d=3`$, a range of parameters for which the RG flow is very slow. As a consequence the correlation length, although finite, is very large and a pseudo-scaling behaviour – an “almost second order phase transition ”  – can be observed. Note however that $`\xi `$ remaining always finite, a true universality should not be expected. This could explain both the observation of a scaling behaviour as well as the existence of a broad spectrum of effective critical exponents in experiments and in numerical simulations. To test this scenario, we have computed effective exponents by linearizing the flow equations around the minimum, taken into account the $`\varphi ^6`$-like terms in our ansatz. We have checked that the inclusion of monomials of order six in the fields is sufficient to ensure the stability of our results. We have found: $`\nu =0.53`$, $`\gamma =1.03`$ and $`\beta =0.28`$, which lie in between the various sets of exponents found experimentally and numerically. At this stage, one has to mention a work of Pelissetto et al. who have studied the $`O(N)O(2)O(N2)O(2)_{diag}`$ LGW model at six-loop order in fixed dimension $`d=3`$ and have reached a somewhat different conclusion . From their analysis, they have concluded that there exists a non trivial fixed point in the Heisenberg case. This is in contrast with a previous three-loop calculation in which no fixed point was found . The question is thus that of the stability of the perturbative results with respect to the number of loops or to the Borel resummation procedures. However, amazingly, the exponents found by Pelissetto et al.$`\nu =0.55(3)`$, $`\gamma =1.06(5)`$ and $`\beta =0.30(2)`$ – are very close to our pseudo-exponents, making the question of the existence of a true fixed point somewhat academic. Finally, we have found a true stable fixed point in $`d=3`$ for $`N`$ larger than a critical value $`N_c(d=3)5`$. For $`N=6`$, using $`\varphi ^{10}`$-like terms, we get $`\nu =0.707`$ and $`\gamma =1.377`$ that lie in between the error bars of the Monte Carlo data  which display a clear second order behaviour with $`\nu =0.700(11)`$ and $`\gamma =1.383(36)`$. Note that no result has been reported within the six-loop perturbative calculation in this case.

Using an exact renormalization group approach, we have reached a global understanding of the physics of frustrated Heisenberg magnets including a matching between the previous perturbative predictions performed around the upper and lower critical dimensions and a good agreement with experimental and numerical data for the critical physics in $`d=3`$.