  In this talk we discuss the role of inhomogeneous phases in the phase diagram
of the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (NJL) and the quark meson (QM) model. By means of a
generalized Ginzburg-Landau (GL) expansion it is concluded that the critical
point in the mean-field phase diagram of the NJL model is in fact a Lifshitz
point where homogeneous spontaneously broken, inhomogeneous and restored phases
meet. This picture is confirmed by a mean-field calculation for inhomogeneous
phases with a one-dimensional modulation. For the latter it is shown that
recent results within lower dimensional models can be extended to 3+1
dimensions. Also the respective phase diagram for the QM model is presented.
