We discuss the influence of fluctuations on thermodynamics near the chiral phase transition within Polyakov loop extended quark--meson model based on the functional renormalization group (FRG) method. We include the gluon fields in the FRG flow equation self-consistently on the mean-field level. We focus on the properties of the phase diagram and net-baryon number fluctuations.
We investigate the quark spectrum near but above the critical temperature of the chiral transition, taking into account the precursory soft modes. It is found that there appear novel excitation spectra of quasi-quarks and quasi-antiquarks with a thre
e-peak structure. By a detailed analysis on the formation of the three-peak structure using Yukawa models, it is shown that the new quark spectra originate from the mixing between a quark (anti-quark) and an antiquark hole (quark hole) caused by a resonant scattering of the quasi-quark with the soft modes which have a small but finite excitation energy with a small width near the critical temperature.
We study the thermodynamic curvature, $R$, around the chiral phase transition at finite temperature and chemical potential, within the quark-meson model augmented with meson fluctuations. We study the effect of the fluctuations, pions and $sigma$-mes
on, on the top of the mean field thermodynamics and how these affect $R$ around the crossover. We find that for small chemical potential the fluctuations enhance the magnitude of $R$, while they do not affect substantially the thermodynamic geometry in the proximity of the critical endpoint. Moreover, in agreement with previous studies we find that $R$ changes sign in the pseudocritical region, suggesting a change of the nature of interactions at the mesoscopic level from statistically repulsive to attractive. Finally, we find that in the critical region around the critical endpoint $|R|$ scales with the correlation volume, $|R| =K;xi^3$, with $K = O(1)$, as expected from hyperscaling; far from the critical endpoint the correspondence between $|R|$ and the correlation volume is not as good as the one we have found at large $mu$, which is not surprising because at small $mu$ the chiral crossover is quite smooth; nevertheless, we have found that $R$ develops a characteristic peak structure, suggesting that it is still capable to capture the pseudocritical behavior of the condensate.
We consider the Polyakov loop-extended two flavor chiral quark--meson model and discuss critical phenomena related with the spontaneous breaking of the chiral symmetry. The model is explored beyond the mean-field approximation in the framework of the
functional renormalisation group. We discuss properties of the net-quark number density fluctuations as well as their higher cumulants. We show that with the increasing net-quark number density, the higher order cumulants exhibit a strong sensitivity to the chiral crossover transition. We discuss their role as probes of the chiral phase transition in heavy-ion collisions at RHIC and LHC.
The effects of fluctuations are discussed around the phase boundary of the inhomogeneous chiral transition between the inhomogeneous chiral phase and the chiral-restored phase. The particular roles of thermal and quantum fluctuations are elucidated a
nd a continuity of their effects across the phase boundary is suggested. In addition, it is argued that anomalies in the thermodynamic quantities should have phenomenological implications for the inhomogeneous chiral transition. Some common features for other phase transitions, such as those from the normal to the inhomogeneous Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov state in superconductivity, are also emphasized.
In this work we present the features of the hadron-quark phase transition diagrams in which the pions are included in the system. To construct such diagrams we use two different models in the description of the hadronic and quark sectors. At the quar
k level, we consider two distinct parametrizations of the Polyakov-Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (PNJL) models. In the hadronic side, we use a well known relativistic mean-field (RMF) nonlinear Walecka model. We show that the effect of the pions on the hadron-quark phase diagrams is to move the critical end point (CEP) of the transitions lines. Such an effect also depends on the value of the critical temperature (T_0) in the pure gauge sector used to parametrize the PNJL models. Here we treat the phase transitions using two values for T_0, namely, T_0 = 270 MeV and T_0 = 190 MeV. The last value is used to reproduce lattice QCD data for the transition temperature at zero chemical potential.