Nonuniform phases in a three-flavor Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model

Abstract: It is shown that flavor mixing of the strange and light quarks allows for existence of a much larger baryonic chemical potential window for the formation of a stable dual chiral-wave state as compared to the well known two flavor case. In addition, strangeness catalyzes the occurrence of a new branch of non-homogeneous solutions at moderate densities. This case study is addressed at zero temperature within the SU(3) flavor Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model with the 't Hooft determinantal flavor mixing interaction. The modulation of the chiral condensates in the light quark sector is taken to be one-dimensional, while strangeness is embedded as a homogeneous condensate in the spontaneously broken phase of chiral symmetry. A finite current quark mass for the strange quark is incorporated, while the up and down current masses are set to zero. In that case the modulation considered provides an exact analytic solution for the system. Despite the simplicity of the \textit{ansatz}, the emerging phase diagram displays a very rich structure.