Crystalline color superconductivity - art. no. 074016

In any context in which color superconductivity arises in nature, it is lik ely to involve pairing between species of quarks with differing chemical po tentials. For suitable values of the differences between chemical potential s, Cooper pairs with nonzero total momentum are favored, as was first reali zed by Larkin, Ovchinnikov, Fulde, and Ferrell (LOFF). Condensates of this sort spontaneously break translational and rotational invariance, leading t o gaps which vary periodically in a crystalline pattern. Unlike the origina l LOFF state, these crystalline quark matter condensates include both spin- zero and spin-one Cooper pairs. We explore the range of parameters for whic h crystalline color superconductivity arises in the QCD phase diagram. If i n some shell within the quark matter core of a neutron star (or within a st range quark star) the quark number densities are such that crystalline colo r superconductivity arises, rotational vortices may be pinned in this shell , making it a locus for glitch phenomena.