Opening the crystalline color superconductivity window

Cold dense quark matter is in a crystalline color superconducting phase wherever pairing occurs between species of quarks with chemical potentials whose difference delta mu lies within an appropriate window. If the interaction between quarks is modeled as pointlike, this window is rather narrow. We show that when the interaction between quarks is modeled as single-gluon exchange, the window widens by about a factor of 10 at accessible densities and by much larger factors at higher density. This striking enhancement reflects the increasingly (1 + 1)-dimensional nature of the physics at weaker and weaker coupling. Our results indicate that crystalline color superconductivity is a generic feature of the phase diagram of cold dense quark matter, occurring wherever one finds quark matter that is not in the color-flavor locked phase. If it occurs within the cores of compact stars, a crystalline color superconducting region may provide a new locus for glitch phenomena.