No Arabic abstract
We determine the phase diagram of QCD on the mu-T plane for small to moderate chemical potentials. Two transition lines are defined with two quantities, the chiral condensate and the strange quark number susceptibility. The calculations are carried out on N_t =6,8 and 10 lattices generated with a Symanzik improved gauge and stout-link improved 2+1 flavor staggered fermion action using physical quark masses. After carrying out the continuum extrapolation we find that both quantities result in a similar curvature of the transition line. Furthermore, our results indicate that in leading order the width of the transition region remains essentially the same as the chemical potential is increased.
The QCD phase diagram is studied in the presence of an isospin asymmetry using continuum extrapolated staggered quarks with physical masses. In particular, we investigate the phase boundary between the normal and the pion condensation phases and the chiral/deconfinement transition. The simulations are performed with a small explicit breaking parameter in order to avoid the accumulation of zero modes and thereby stabilize the algorithm. The limit of vanishing explicit breaking is obtained by means of an extrapolation, which is facilitated by a novel improvement program employing the singular value representation of the Dirac operator. Our findings indicate that no pion condensation takes place above $Tapprox 160$ MeV and also suggest that the deconfinement crossover continuously connects to the BEC-BCS crossover at high isospin asymmetries. The results may be directly compared to effective theories and model approaches to QCD.
Neither the chiral limit nor finite baryon density can be simulated directly in lattice QCD, which severely limits our understanding of the QCD phase diagram. In this review I collect results for the phase structure in an extended parameter space of QCD, with varying numbers of flavours, quark masses, colours, lattice spacings, imaginary and isospin chemical potentials. Such studies help in understanding the underlying symmetries and degrees of freedom, and are beginning to provide a consistent picture constraining the possibilities for the physical phase diagram.
We study the phase diagram and the thermodynamic properties of QCD at nonzero isospin asymmetry at physical quark masses with staggered quarks. In particular, continuum results for the phase boundary between the normal and the pion condensation phases and the chiral/deconfinement transition are presented. Our findings indicate that the pion condensation phase is restricted to $Tlesssim170$~MeV for isospin chemical potentials up to 325~MeV. We also use the data to test the range of validity of the Taylor expansion method and show first results for the equation of state.
Recent progress and the latest results on the bulk thermodynamic properties of QCD matter from lattice are reviewed. In particular, I will stress upon the fact that lattice techniques are now entering into precision era where they can provide us with new insights on even the microscopic degrees of freedom in different phases of QCD. I will discuss some instances, from the recent studies of topological fluctuations and screening masses. The progress towards understanding the effects of anomalous $U_A(1)$ symmetry on the chiral crossover transition and transport properties of QCD matter will also be discussed.
We present the crossover line between the quark gluon plasma and the hadron gas phases for small real chemical potentials. First we determine the effect of imaginary values of the chemical potential on the transition temperature using lattice QCD simulations. Then we use various formulas to perform an analytic continuation to real values of the baryo-chemical potential. Our data set maintains strangeness neutrality to match the conditions of heavy ion physics. The systematic errors are under control up to $mu_Bapprox 300$ MeV. For the curvature of the transition line we find that there is an approximate agreement between values from three different observables: the chiral susceptibility, chiral condensate and strange quark susceptibility. The continuum extrapolation is based on $N_t=$ 10, 12 and 16 lattices. By combining the analysis for these three observables we find, for the curvature, the value $kappa = 0.0149 pm 0.0021$.