We present the thermodynamic properties of strongly interacting matter in finite volume in the framework of Polyakov loop enhanced Nambu$-$Jona-lasinio model within mean field approximation. We considered both the 2 flavor and 2+1 flavor matter. Our
primary observation was a qualitative change in the phase transition properties that resulted in the lowering of the temperature corresponding to the critical end point. This would make it favorable for detection in heavy-ion experiments that intend to create high density matter with considerably small temperatures. We further demonstrate the possibility of obtaining chiral symmetry restoration even within the confined phase in finite volumes.
We present the phase diagram and the fluctuations of different conserved charges like quark number, charge and strangeness at vanishing chemical potential for the 2+1 flavor Polyakov Loop extended Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model with eight-quark interactio
n terms using three-momentum cutoff regularisation. The main effect of the higher order interaction term is to shift the critical end point to the lower value of the chemical potential and higher value of the temperature. The fluctuations show good qualitative agreement with the lattice data.
We present a study of correlations among conserved charges like baryon number, electric charge and strangeness in the framework of 2+1 flavor Polyakov loop extended Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model at vanishing chemical potentials, up to fourth order. Correl
ations up to second order have been measured in Lattice QCD which compares well with our estimates given the inherent difference in the pion masses in the two systems. Possible physical implications of these correlations and their importance in understanding the matter obtained in heavy-ion collisions are discussed. We also present comparison of the results with the commonly used unbound effective potential in the quark sector of this model.
We have investigated the fluctuations and the higher order susceptibilities of quark number, isospin number, electric charge and strangeness at vanishing chemical potential for 2+1 flavor Polyakov loop extended Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model. The calculat
ions are performed for the bound effective potential in the quark sector requiring up to eight quark interaction terms. These have been contrasted to the lattice results which currently have somewhat heavier quarks in the light flavor sector. The results show sufficient qualitative agreement. For comparison we also present the results obtained with the conventional effective potential containing upto six quark interaction terms.
We present the bulk thermodynamic properties and phase diagram of strongly interacting matter in an extension of the 3-flavor NJL and PNJL models of QCD. Using a three momentum cut-off scheme, we have extended the multiquark interaction terms up to e
ight order so that the stability of the vacuum is ensured in these models. We explore the effects of various combinations of the two eight-quark couplings $g_1$ and $g_2$ and present a comparative study between the NJL and PNJL models as well as Lattice QCD data. The main effect of the eight-quark interaction term is to shift the critical end point in the $T-mu$ phase diagram to a lower value of $mu$ and higher value of $T$, thus bringing them closer to Lattice QCD results.
