Absence of the London limit for the first-order phase transition to a color superconductor

Abstract

We study the effects of gauge-field fluctuations on the free energy of a homogeneous color superconductor in the color-flavor-locked (CFL) phase. Gluonic fluctuations induce a strong first-order phase transition, in contrast to electronic superconductors where this transition is weakly first order. The critical temperature for this transition is larger than the one corresponding to the diquark pairing instability. The physical reason is that the gluonic Meissner masses suppress long-wavelength fluctuations as compared to the normal conducting phase where gluons are massless, which stabilizes the superconducting phase. In weak coupling, we analytically compute the temperatures associated with the limits of metastability of the normal and superconducting phases, as well as the latent heat associated with the first-order phase transition. We then extrapolate our results to intermediate densities and numerically evaluate the temperature of the fluctuation-induced first-order phase transition, as well as the discontinuity of the diquark condensate at the critical point. We find that the London limit of magnetic interactions is absent in color superconductivity.