Sign problem and the chiral spiral on the finite-density lattice

We investigate the sign problem of the fermion determinant at finite baryon density in (1+1) dimensions, in which the ground state in the chiral limit should be free from the sign problem by forming a chiral spiral. To confirm it, we evaluate the fermion determinant in the continuum theory at the one-loop level and find that the determinant becomes real as expected. The conventional lattice formulation to implement a chemical potential is, however, not compatible with the spiral transformation. We discuss an alternative of the finite-density formulation and numerically verify the chiral spiral on the finite-density lattice.