High-density quark matter under stress

We study the effect of SU(3)-flavor breaking on high-density quark matter. We discuss, in particular, a nonzero electron chemical potential and a finite strange-quark mass. We argue that these perturbations trigger pion or kaon condensation. The critical chemical potential behaves as mu(e) similar to rootmm(s)Delta/p(F) and the critical strange-quark mass as m(s) similar to m(1/3)Delta(2/3), where m is the light-quark mass, Delta is the gap, and p(F) is the Fermi momentum. We note that parametrically, both the critical mu(e) and m(s)(2)/(2p(F)) are much smaller than the gap. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.