Time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau approach to the dynamics of inhomogeneous chiral condensates in a nonlocal Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model

Abstract

We study the dynamics of inhomogeneous scalar and pseudoscalar chiral order parameters within the framework of the time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau equations. We utilize a nonlocal chiral quark model to obtain the phase diagram of the model as a function of temperature and baryon chemical potential and study the formation of metastable spatial domains of matter where the order parameters acquire a spatial modulation in the course of their dynamical evolution. We found that, before reaching the expected equilibrium homogeneous state, both scalar and pseudoscalar chiral condensates go through long-lived metastable inhomogeneous structures. For different initial configurations of the order parameters, the lifetimes of the inhomogeneous structures are compared to timescales in a relativistic heavy-ion collision.