The linear sigma model at a finite isospin chemical potential

The effect of a finite isospin chemical potential on the effective masses of mesons at finite temperature is investigated in the framework of the O(4) linear sigma model with explicit chiral symmetry breaking. We present a mechanism to include the isospin chemical potential in the model. By using the Cornwall?Jackiw?Tomboulis method of composite operators, we obtain a set of gap equations for the effective masses of the mesons and get the numerical results in the Hartree approximation. We find that the introduction of the chemical potential only affects the mass of the charged pions and sigma, while there is almost no effect on the mass of neutral pions.