Condensates and pressure of two-flavor chiral perturbation theory at nonzero isospin and temperature

Abstract

We consider two-flavor chiral perturbation theory ($χ$PT) at finite isospin chemical potential $μ_I$ and finite temperature $T$. We calculate the effective potential and the quark and pion condensates as functions of $T$ and $μ_I$ to next-to-leading order in the low-energy expansion in the presence of a pionic source. We map out the phase diagram in the $μ_I$--$T$ plane. Numerically, we find that the transition to the pion-condensed phase is second order in the region of validity of $χ$PT, which is in agreement with model calculations and lattice simulations. Finally, we calculate the pressure to two-loop order in the symmetric phase for nonzero $μ_I$ and find that $χ$PT seems to be converging very well.