Paper detail

Phases of QCD at nonzero isospin and strangeness chemical potentials with application to pion stars

We study pion and kaon condensation using three-flavor chiral perturbation theory at finite isospin and strangeness quark chemical potentials μI and μS . The phase diagram consists of a vacuum phase and three distinct Bose condensed phases with condensates of charged pions as well as charged and neutral kaons. Adding electromagnetic interactions, a phase with a charged condensate becomes a Higgs phase and the resulting phase diagram is modified due to the electromagnetic mass splittings of the mesons. The results for the pion-condensed phase are applied to calculate mass-radius relation of pion stars. Local electric charge neutrality is imposed by adding electrons, muons together with their neutrionos. Finally, we compare our results for the mass-radius relations with those from recent lattice simulations, and find very good agreement.