Universality of the chiral soliton lattice in the low energy limit of QCD

Abstract: In this paper, we show that the chiral soliton lattice (ChSL) is, in a precise sense, a universal feature of the low-energy limit of QCD minimally coupled to Maxwell theory. Here, we disclose that not only can the ChSL be obtained from the gauged Skyrme model in $3+1$ dimensions, including the back-reaction of the Maxwell $U(1)$ gauge field, we also show that the ChSL remains unchanged if the sub-leading corrections to the Skyrme model in the 't Hooft large $N_c$ expansion are included. Taking into account the highly non-linear character of such corrections, this is quite a surprising result. By considering a suitable ansatz adapted to describe topological solitons at finite baryon density in a constant magnetic field, the generalized Skyrme model coupled to the Maxwell theory is reduced to the effective Lagrangian of the ChSL phase, describing a lattice of domain walls made of hadrons. One of the key points in this construction is the fact that even when the usual topological charge density vanishes, the presence of the Callan-Witten term in the topological charge density allows for a non-vanishing baryon number. In the present approach, the magnetic field can be external, as is usually assumed for the ChSL, or it can be self-consistently generated by the hadronic layers themselves. Finally, we show how our formulation allows us to study the coupling of the chiral soliton lattice with quark matter.