  We study the emergence of color superconductivity in the theory of the strong
interaction at supranuclear densities. To this end, we follow the
renormalization group (RG) flow of dense strong-interaction matter with two
massless quark flavors from the fundamental quark and gluon degrees of freedom
at high energies down to the non-perturbative low-energy regime which is found
to be governed by the dynamical formation of diquark states. With the strong
coupling at the initial RG scale as the only input parameter, we compute the
(chirally symmetric) scalar diquark condensate and analyze its scaling behavior
over a wide range of the quark chemical potential. Approximations entering our
computations are critically assessed. Since our approach naturally allows us to
study the scale dependence of couplings, we also monitor the strength of
couplings appearing in low-energy models of dense strong-interaction matter.
The observed dependence of these couplings on the quark chemical potential may
help to amend model studies in the future. Finally, we estimate the speed of
sound of dense QCD matter. Our results indicate that the speed of sound exceeds
the value of the noninteracting quark gas at high densities and even increases
as the density is decreased, across a wide range, suggesting the existence of a
maximum at supranuclear densities.
