Quarkyonic matter and chiral symmetry breaking

The appearance of a new phase of QCD, Quarkyonic Matter in the limit of large number of colors is studied within Nambu-Jona-Lasinio effective chiral model coupled to the Polyakov loop. The interplay of this novel QCD phase with chiral symmetry restoration and color deconfinement is discussed. We find that at vanishing temperature and at large N-c, the quarkyonic transition occurs at densities only slightly lower than that expected for the chiral transition. This property is also shown to be valid at finite temperature if the temperature is less than that of deconfinement. The position and N-c-dependence of chiral critical end point is also discussed. (C) 2009 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.