Opening the crystalline color superconductivity window - art. no. 094005

Cold dense quark matter is in a crystalline color superconducting phase whe rever pairing occurs between species of quarks with chemical potentials who se difference delta mu lies within an appropriate window. If the interactio n between quarks is modeled as pointlike, this window is rather narrow. We show that when the interaction between quarks is modeled as single-gluon ex change, the window widens by about a factor of 10 at accessible densities a nd by much larger factors at higher density. This striking enhancement refl ects the increasingly (1 + 1)-dimensional nature of the physics at weaker a nd weaker coupling. Our results indicate that crystalline color superconduc tivity is a generic feature of the phase diagram of cold dense quark matter , occurring wherever one finds quark matter that is not in the color-flavor locked phase. If it occurs within the cores of compact stars, a crystallin e color superconducting region may provide a new locus for glitch phenomena .