Abstract:
Motivated by the SO(5) theory of high-temperature
superconductivity and antiferromagnetism, we ask if an
SO(10) theory unifies color superconductivity and chiral
symmetry breaking in QCD. The transition to the color
superconducting phase would then be analogous to a spin flop
transition. While the spin flop transition generically has a
unified SO(3) description, the SO(5) and SO(10) symmetric
fixed points are unstable, at least in (4 - epsilon)
dimensions, and require the fine-tuning of one additional
relevant parameter. If QCD is near the SO(10) fixed point,
it has interesting consequences for heavy ion collisions and
neutron stars.