Anomaly-Induced Inhomogeneous Phase in Quark Matter without the Sign Problem

Abstract

We demonstrate the existence of an anomaly-induced inhomogeneous phase in a class of vectorlike gauge theories without the sign problem, thus disproving the long-standing conjecture that the absence of the sign problem precludes spontaneous breaking of translational invariance. The presence of the phase in the two-color modification of quantum chromodynamics can be tested by an independent nonperturbative evaluation of the neutral pion decay constant as a function of an external magnetic field. Our results provide a benchmark for future lattice studies of inhomogeneous phases in dense quark matter.