Analysis of QCD at finite isospin density: on the relationship between quark degrees of freedom in hadrons and equation of state

Abstract

We investigate the quark contribution to the equation of state (EOS) of the isospin QCD matter using the two-flavor quark meson model at finite isospin density. This model includes the quark degrees of freedom through the lowest order of the loop correction. This model describes the crossover of the pion condensate from the Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) phase at low density to the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) phase at high density. In the absence of the quark degrees of freedom the pion condensate behaves as the bosonic object, but the quark substructure becomes important and suppress the pion condensate by Pauli blocking as density increase. As the isospin density increases, the EOS rapidly becomes stiff and approaches to the quark matter even before pion starts to overlap. Consequently, the sound velocity exceeds the conformal value $c_s^2 = 1/3$, forming a peak structure and then relax to the conformal value from above at high density. This is in good agreement with the recent lattice QCD (LQCD) result. In contrast, the perturbative QCD (pQCD) result suggests that the sound velocity approaches to the conformal value from below. This discrepancy comes from the non-perturbative effects arising from the pion condensate or the quark-antiquark correlation near the Fermi surface in the quark meson model. We also investigated the trace anomaly as another measure of conformality. The effects of finite temperature on sound velocity were also examined. On the isentropic trajectory, where $s/n_I$ is fixed, the thermal quarks were found to suppress the sound velocity and smear out the peak structure. The thermal mesons are considered to be important at zero density from LQCD, which is confirmed in this model calculation. The analysis is further extended to the condensed phase at high density, where it is found that thermal mesons do not significantly contribute to the EOS.