Casimir effect in dense QCD matter

Suzuki, Kei   ; Fujii, Daisuke; Nakayama, Katsumasa*

The conventional Casimir effect is defined for photon fields in the QED vacuum, whereas various quasiparticle fields realized in condensed matter systems can lead to novel types of Casimir-effect-like phenomena. In QCD and nuclear physics, such a situation is rare, but there are some possibilities in dense-QCD/nuclear matter. For example, the dual chiral density wave (DCDW) phase has been studied as the ground state of finite-density QCD. In this talk, we discuss the typical features of the Casimir effect in a small-size medium in such a ground state. The Casimir effect from quark fields leads to oscillations of physical quantities as a function of system size. A counterpart of this phenomenon is expected to appear also in Weyl semimetals, and we discuss the comparison between quark matter and Weyl semimetals.