Chiral density wave in nuclear matter

Inspired by recent work on inhomogeneous chiral condensation in cold, dense quark matter within models featuring quark degrees of freedom, we investigate the chiral density-wave solution in nuclear matter at zero temperature and nonvanishing baryon number density in the framework of the so-called extended linear sigma model (eLSM). The eLSM is an effective model for the strong interaction based on the global chiral symmetry of quantum chromodynamics (QCD). It contains scalar, pseudoscalar, vector, and axial-vector mesons as well as baryons. In the latter sector, the nucleon and its chiral partner are introduced as parity doublets in the mirror assignment. The eLSM simultaneously provides a good description of hadrons in vacuum as well as nuclear matter ground-state properties. We find that an inhomogeneous phase in the form of a chiral density wave is realized, but only for densities larger than 2.4 rho(0), where rho(0) is the nuclear matter ground-state density. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.