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 sim
ulations. 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 $kappa = 0.0149 pm 0.0021$.
The existence and stability of atoms rely on the fact that neutrons are more massive than protons. The measured mass difference is only 0.14% of the average of the two masses. A slightly smaller or larger value would have led to a dramatically differ
ent universe. Here, we show that this difference results from the competition between electromagnetic and mass isospin breaking effects. We performed lattice quantum-chromodynamics and quantum-electrodynamics computations with four nondegenerate Wilson fermion flavors and computed the neutron-proton mass-splitting with an accuracy of $300$ kilo-electron volts, which is greater than $0$ by $5$ standard deviations. We also determine the splittings in the $Sigma$, $Xi$, $D$ and $Xi_{cc}$ isospin multiplets, exceeding in some cases the precision of experimental measurements.
We use the Wilson flow to define the gauge anisotropy at a given physical scale. We demonstrate the use of the anisotropic flow by performing the tuning of the bare gauge anisotropy in the tree-level Symanzik action for several lattice spacings and t
arget anisotropies. We use this method to tune the anisotropy parameters in full QCD, where we also exploit the diminishing effect of a well chosen smearing on the renormalization of the fermion anisotropy.
We study QCD thermodynamics using two flavors of dynamical overlap fermions with quark masses corresponding to a pion mass of 350 MeV. We determine several observables on N_t=6 and 8 lattices. All our runs are performed with fixed global topology. Ou
r results are compared with staggered ones and a nice agreement is found.
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 o
ut 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.
We conclude our investigations on the QCD cross-over transition temperatures with 2+1 staggered flavours and one-link stout improvement. We extend our previous two studies [Phys. Lett. B643 (2006) 46, JHEP 0906:088 (2009)] by choosing even finer latt
ices (N_t=16) and we work again with physical quark masses. These new results [for details see JHEP 1009:073,2010] support our earlier findings. We compare them with the published results of the hotQCD collaboration. All these results are confronted with the predictions of the Hadron Resonance Gas model and Chiral Perturbation Theory for temperatures below the transition region. Our results can be reproduced by using the physical spectrum. The findings of the hotQCD collaboration can be recovered only by using a distorted spectrum. This analysis provides a simple explanation for the observed discrepancy in the transition T between our and the hotQCD collaborations.
We conclude our investigation on the QCD equation of state (EoS) with 2+1 staggered flavors and one-link stout improvement. We extend our previous study [JHEP 0601:089 (2006)] by choosing even finer lattices. These new results [for details see arXiv:
1007.2580] support our earlier findings. Lattices with N_t=6,8 and 10 are used, and the continuum limit is approached by checking the results at N_t=12. A Symanzik improved gauge and a stout-link improved staggered fermion action is taken; the light and strange quark masses are set to their physical values. Various observables are calculated in the temperature (T) interval of 100 to 1000~MeV. We compare our data to the equation of state obtained by the hotQCD collaboration.
