A phenomenological QCD quasiparticle model provides a means to map lattice QCD results to regions relevant for a variety of heavy-ion collision experiments at larger baryon density. We report on effects of collectives modes and damping on the equation of state.
In this proceedings contribution, we discuss recent developments in the perturbative determination of the Equation of State of dense quark matter, relevant for the microscopic description of neutron star cores. First, we introduce the current state of the art in the problem, both at zero and small temperatures, and then present results from two recent perturbative studies that pave the way towards extending the EoS to higher orders in perturbation theory.
The dynamics of QCD matter is often described using effective mean field (MF) models based on Boltzmann-Gibbs (BG) extensive statistics. However, such matter is normally produced in small packets and in violent collisions where the usual conditions justifying the use of BG statistics are not fulfilled and the systems produced are not extensive. This can be accounted for either by enriching the original dynamics or by replacing the BG statistics by its nonextensive counterpart described by a nonextensivity parameter $q eq 1$ (for $q to 1$ one returns to the extensive situation). In this work we investigate the interplay between the effects of dynamics and nonextensivity. Since the complexity of the nonextensive MF models prevents their simple visualization, we instead use some simple quasi-particle description of QCD matter in which the interaction is modelled phenomenologically by some effective fugacities, $z$. Embedding such a model in a nonextensive environment allows for a well-defined separation of the dynamics (represented by $z$) and the nonextensivity (represented by $q$) and a better understanding of their relationship.
Various thermodynamic quantities for baryon-free matter are calculated by combining the most reliable non-perturbative and perturbative calculations, especially the most recent ones including as many quark flavors as possible. We extend these calculations by including other degrees of freedom (dof), such as photons, neutrinos, leptons, electroweak particles, and Higgs bosons, that allows us to consider the temperatures up to the TeV-scale. The calculations show that similar to QCD, the EW phase transition is also a crossover. We have found that while the equation of state for the hadronic matter is linear, $p/rhosimeq 0.2$, the one for higher temperatures is rather complex; it exhibits two crossover-type phase transitions, corresponding to strong and EW matter. At even larger energy densities, the deduced EoS becomes linear again and close to ideal gas. The combined equation of state can be used for modeling the expansion of the Universe from very early times and through the EW and QCD era.
We present a description of the equation of state of strongly interacting matter within a quasi-particle model. The model is adjusted to lattice QCD data near the deconfinement temperature $T_c$. We compare in detail the excess pressure at non-vanishing chemical potential and its expansion coefficients with two-flavor lattice QCD calculations and outline prospects of the extrapolation to large baryon density.
We discuss the Hard Dense Loop resummation at finite quark mass and evaluate the equation of state (EoS) of cold and dense QCD matter in $beta$ equilibrium. The resummation in the quark sector has an effect of lowering the baryon number density and the EoS turns out to have much smaller uncertainty than the perturbative QCD estimate. Our numerical results favor smooth matching between the EoS from the resummed QCD calculation at high density and the extrapolated EoS from the nuclear matter density region. We also point out that the speed of sound in our EoS slightly exceeds the conformal limit.