Sound velocity peak induced by the chiral partner in dense two-color QCD

Recently, the peak structure of the sound velocity was observed in the lattice simulation of two-color and two-flavor QCD at the finite quark chemical potential. The comparison with the chiral perturbation theory (ChPT) result was undertaken; however, the ChPT failed in reproducing the peak structure. In this study, to extend the ChPT framework, we incorporate contributions of the <a:math xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><a:mi>σ</a:mi></a:math> meson, that is identified as the chiral partner of pions, on top of the low-energy pion dynamics by using the linear sigma model (LSM). Based on the LSM, we derive analytic expressions of the thermodynamic quantities as well as the sound velocity within a mean-field approximation. As a result, we find that those quantities are provided by sums of the ChPT results and corrections, where the latter is characterized by a mass difference between the chiral partners, the <c:math xmlns:c="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><c:mi>σ</c:mi></c:math> meson and pion. The chiral partner contributions are found to yield a peak in the sound velocity successfully. We furthermore show that the sound velocity peak emerges only when <e:math xmlns:e="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><e:msub><e:mi>m</e:mi><e:mi>σ</e:mi></e:msub><e:mo>></e:mo><e:msqrt><e:mn>3</e:mn></e:msqrt><e:msub><e:mi>m</e:mi><e:mi>π</e:mi></e:msub></e:math> and <g:math xmlns:g="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><g:msub><g:mi>μ</g:mi><g:mi>q</g:mi></g:msub><g:mo>></g:mo><g:msub><g:mi>m</g:mi><g:mi>π</g:mi></g:msub></g:math>, with <i:math xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><i:msub><i:mi>m</i:mi><i:mrow><i:mi>σ</i:mi><i:mo stretchy="false">(</i:mo><i:mi>π</i:mi><i:mo stretchy="false">)</i:mo></i:mrow></i:msub></i:math> and <m:math xmlns:m="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><m:msub><m:mi>μ</m:mi><m:mi>q</m:mi></m:msub></m:math> being the <o:math xmlns:o="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><o:mi>σ</o:mi></o:math> meson (pion) mass and the quark chemical potential, respectively. The correlation between the sound velocity peak and the sign of the trace anomaly is also addressed. Published by the American Physical Society 2024