Chemical potential dependence of chiral quark condensate in Dyson-Schwinger equation approach of QCD

We propose a chemical potential-dependent effective gluon propagator and study the chiral quark condensate in strongly interacting matter in the framework of Dyson-Schwinger equation approach. The obtained results manifest that, as the effect of the chemical potential on the effective gluon propagator is taken into account, the chiral quark condensate decreases gradually with the increasing of the chemical potential if it is less than the critical value, and the condensate vanishes suddenly at the critical chemical potential. The inclusion of the chemical potential in the effective gluon propagator enhances the decreasing rate and decreases the critical chemical potential. It indicates that the chiral symmetry can be restored completely at a critical chemical potential and restored partially as the chemical potential is less than the critical value. If the effective gluon propagator is independent of the chemical potential, the chiral symmetry can only be restored suddenly but no gradual restoration. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.