  The two-flavor quark-meson model is used as a low-energy effective model for
QCD to study inhomogeneous chiral condensates at finite %temperature $T$ baryon
chemical potential $\mu_B$. The parameters of the model are determined by
matching the meson and quark masses, and the pion decay constant to their
physical values using the on-shell and modified minimal subtraction schemes.
Using a chiral-density wave ansatz for the inhomogeneity, we calculate the
effective potential in the mean-field approximation and the result is
completely analytic. The size of the inhomogeneous phase depends sensitively on
the pion mass and whether one includes the vacuum fluctuations or not. Finally,
we briefly discuss the mean-field phase diagram.
