We study the phase diagram and the pion modes in the electrically neutral two flavor PNJL model. One of the main result of this paper is that when electrical neutrality is required, pions do not condense in the ground state of the model: the isospin chemical potential $μ_I = -μ_e/2$ is always smaller than the value required for pion condensation to occur. Moreover we investigate on the pions and $σ$ mass spectra. We find that the qualitative behavior of the masses resembles that obtained in the NJL model. We close this paper by studying the intriguing possibility that a bound state with the quantum numbers of the pions can be formed above the chiral phase transition.
We discuss a gauge-invariant prescription to take the mean-field approximation self-consistently in the PNJL model (Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model with the Polyakov loop). We first address the problem of non-vanishing color density in normal quark matter, which is an artifact arising from gauge-fixed treatment of the Polyakov loop mean-fields. We then confirm that the gauge average incorporated in our prescription resolves this problem and ensures color neutrality. We point out that the proposed method has an advantage in computing the expectation value of any function of the Polyakov loop matrix. …
The phase diagram of a two-flavor Polyakov loop Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model is analyzed imposing the constraint of color charge neutrality. Main effects of this constraint are a shrinking of the chiral symmetry breaking (chiSB) domain in the T-mu plane, a shift of the critical point to lower temperatures and a coexistence of chiSB and two-flavor superconducting phases. The effects can be understood in view of the presence of a nonvanishing color chemical potential mu_8, which is necessary to compensate the color charge density rho_8 induced by the nonvanishing Polyakov-loop mean field phi_3.
The kaon to pion ratios are discussed in the framework of a 2+1 flavor PNJL model. In order to interpret the behaviour of bound states in medium the Beth-Uhlenbeck approach is used. It is shown that in terms of phase shifts in the K+ channel an additional low-energy mode could appear as a bound state in medium since the masses of the quark constituents are different. The comparison with experimental data for the ratios is performed and the influence of the anomalous mode to the "horn" effect in the K+/pi+ ratio is discussed.
We study how the charge neutrality affects the phase structure of three-flavor PNJL model. We point out that, within the conventional PNJL model at finite density the color neutrality is missing because the Wilson line serves as an external ``colored'' field coupled to dynamical quarks. In this paper we heuristically assume that the model may still be applicable. To get color neutrality one has then to allow non vanishing color chemical potentials. We study how the quark matter phase diagram in $(T,m_s^2/μ)$-plane is affected by imposing neutrality and by including the Polyakov loop dynamics. …
Pion dissociation by the Mott effect in quark plasma is described within the generalized Beth-Uhlenbeck approach on the basis of the PNJL model which allows for a unified description of bound, resonant and scattering states. As a first approximation, we utilize the Breit-Wigner ansatz for the spectral function and clarify its relation to the complex mass pole solution of the pion Bethe-Salpeter equation. Application of the Levinson theorem proves that describing the pion Mott dissociation solely by means of spectral broadening of the pion bound state beyond T_Mott leaves out a significant aspe…
The mesonic excitations and s-wave pi--pi scattering lengths at finite temperature are studied in the two-flavor Polyakov--Nambu--Jona-Lasinio (PNJL) model. The masses of pi-meson and sigma-meson, pion-decay constant, the pion-quark coupling strength, and the scattering lengths $a_{0}$ and $a_{2}$ at finite temperature are calculated in the PNJL model with two forms of Polyakov-loop effective potential. The obtained results are almost independent of the choice of the effective potentials. The calculated results in the PNJL model are also compared with those in the conventional Nambu--Jona-Lasi…
In this work, we self-consistently explore the possibility of charged pion superfluidity and cosmic trajectories in early Universe under the framework of Polyakov-Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model. By taking the badly constrained lepton flavor asymmetries $l_{\rm e}$ and $l_μ$ as free parameters, the upper boundaries of pion superfluidity phase are consistently found to be around the pseudocritical temperature at zero chemical potentials. So the results greatly support the choice of $T=0.16~{\rm GeV}$ as the upper boundary of pion superfluidity in the previous lattice QCD study. Take $l_{\rm e}+l_μ=-0…
The effect of Polyakov loop on the QCD phase diagram at high density is studied within the Nambu-Jona Lasinio model with Polyakov loop (PNJL model). We point out that the color neutrality is missing in the standard PNJL model at finite density. Moreover, we discuss how the color-flavor locked (CFL) phase is to be distorted by the inclusion of Polyakov loop.
The phase diagram of a three-flavor Polyakov-loop Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model is analyzed for the case of isospin symmetric matter with color superconducting phases. The coexistence of chiral symmetry breaking and two-flavor color superconductivity (2SC phase) and a thermodynamic instability due to the implementation of a color neutrality constraint is observed. It is suggested to use a universal hadronization pressure to estimate the phase border between hadronic and quark-gluon plasma phases. Trajectories of constant entropy per baryon are analyzed for conditions appropriate for heavy-ion colli…
We investigate the effect of composite pions on the behaviour of the chiral condensate at finite temperature within the Polyakov-loop improved NJL model. To this end we treat quark-antiquark correlations in the pion channel (bound states and scattering continuum) within a Beth-Uhlenbeck approach that uses medium-dependent phase shifts. A striking medium effect is the Mott transition which occurs when the binding energy vanishes and the discrete pion bound state merges the continuum. This transition is triggered by the lowering of the continuum edge due to the chiral restoration transition. Thi…
We study the quark-hadron phase transition by using a three flavor Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model with the Polyakov loop at zero chemical potential, extending our previous work with two flavor model. We show that the equation of state at low temperatures is dominated by pions and kaons as collective modes of quarks and anti-quarks. As temperature increases, mesonic collective modes melt into the continuum of quark and anti-quark so that hadronic phase changes continuously to the quark phase where quark excitations dominate pressure.
The behavior of strange matter in the frame of the SU(3)Polyakov-loop extended Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model including $U_A(1)$ anomaly is considered. We discuss the appearance of a peak in the ratio of the number of strange mesons to non-strange mesons known as the "horn". The PNJL model gives a schematic description of the chiral phase transition and meson properties at finite temperature and density. Using the model, we can show that the splitting of kaon and anti-kaon masses appears as a result of introduction of density. This may explain the difference in the $K^+/π^+$ ratio and $K^-/π^-$ rati…
We extend our previous study of the quark-hadron phase transition at finite temperatures with zero net baryon density by two flavor Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model with Polyakov loop to the three flavor case in a scheme which incorporates flavor nonet pseudo scalar and scalar mesonic correlations on equal footing. The role of the axial U(1) breaking Kobayashi-Maskawa-'t Hooft interaction on the low-lying thermal excitations is examined. At low temperatures, only mesonic correlations, mainly due to low mass mesonic collective excitations, pions and kaons, dominate the pressure while thermal excitation…
Within the three-flavor PNJL and EPNJL chiral quark models we have obtained pseudoscalar meson properties in quark matter at finite temperature $T$ and baryochemical potential $μ_B$. We compare the meson pole (Breit-Wigner) approximation with the Beth-Uhlenbeck (BU) approach that takes into account the continuum of quark-antiquark scattering states when determining the partial densities of pions and kaons. We evaluate the kaon-to-pion ratios along the (pseudo-)critical line in the $T-μ_B$ plane as a proxy for the chemical freezeout line, whereby the variable $x=T/μ_B$ is introduced that corres…
We study pion condensation and the phase structure in a two-flavor Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model in the presence of baryon chemical potential $μ$ and isospin chemical potential $μ_I$at zero and finite temperature. There is a competition between the chiral condensate and a Bose-Einstein condensate of charged pions. In the chiral limit, the chiral condensate vanishes for any finite value of the isospin chemical potential, while there is a charged pion condensate that depends on the chemical potentials and the temperature. At the physical point, the chiral condensate is always nonzero, while the charg…
The Monte-Carlo method is applied to the Polyakov-loop extended Nambu--Jona-Lasinio (PNJL) model. This leads beyond the saddle-point approximation in a mean-field calculation and introduces fluctuations around the mean fields. We study the impact of fluctuations on the thermodynamics of the model, both in the case of pure gauge theory and including two quark flavors. In the two-flavor case, we calculate the second-order Taylor expansion coefficients of the thermodynamic grand canonical partition function with respect to the quark chemical potential and present a comparison with extrapolations …
We analyze the features of strongly interacting matter in the presence of nonzero isospin chemical potential $μ_I$, within a nonlocal two-flavor Polyakov-Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (PNJL) model. For a system at finite temperature $T$, we describe the behavior of various thermodynamic quantities and study the phase diagram in the $μ_I - T$ plane. In particular, it is found that for values of $μ_I$ larger than the pion mass and temperatures lower than a critical value of about 170 MeV the system lies in an isospin symmetry broken phase signaled by the presence of a nonzero pion condensate. Our results f…
The present work generalizes a nonlocal version of the Polyakov loop-extended Nambu and Jona-Lasinio (PNJL) model to the case of three active quark flavors, with inclusion of the axial U(1) anomaly. Gluon dynamics is incorporated through a gluonic background field, expressed in terms of the Polyakov loop. The thermodynamics of the nonlocal PNJL model accounts for both chiral and deconfinement transitions. Our results obtained in mean-field approximation are compared to lattice QCD results for $N_\text{f}=2+1$ quark flavors. Additional pionic and kaonic contributions to the pressure are calcula…
The average phase factor of the QCD determinant is evaluated at finite quark chemical potential (μ_q) with the two-flavor version of the Polyakov-loop extended Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (PNJL) model with the scalar-type eight-quark interaction. For μ_q larger than half the pion mass at vacuum m_π, the average phase factor is finite only when the Polyakov loop is larger than 0.5, indicating that lattice QCD is feasible only in the deconfinement phase. A critical endpoint (CEP) lies in the region of the zero average phase factor. The scalar-type eight-quark interaction makes it shorter a relative dista…
The phase diagram of dense quark matter with chiral imbalance is considered with the conditions of electric neutrality and $β$-equilibrium. It has been shown recently that chiral imbalance can generate charged pion condensation in dense quark matter, so it was interesting to verify that this phenomenon takes place in realistic physical scenarios such as electrically neutral matter in $β$-equilibrium, because a window of pion condensation at dense quark matter phase diagram (without chiral imbalance) predicted earlier was closed by the consideration of these conditions at the physical current q…
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 quark 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…
An updated version of the PNJL model is used to study the thermodynamics of N_f = 2 quark flavors interacting through chiral four-point couplings and propagating in a homogeneous Polyakov loop background. Previous PNJL calculations are extended by introducing explicit diquark degrees of freedom and an improved effective potential for the Polyakov loop field. The input is fixed exclusively by selected pure-gauge lattice QCD results and by pion properties in vacuum. The resulting (T, μ) phase diagram is studied with special emphasis on the critical point, its dependence on the quark mass and on …
We explore the phase diagram of two-flavor QCD at imaginary values of baryon and isospin chemical potentials analyzing the thermodynamic potential of QCD analytically and that of the Polyakov-loop extended Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (PNJL) model numerically. QCD has no pion condensation at imaginary baryon and isospin chemical potentials, and therefore has discrete symmetries that are not present at real baryon and isospin chemical potentials. The PNJL model possesses all the discrete symmetries. The PNJL model can reproduce qualitatively lattice QCD data presented very lately.
We investigate the possible location of the critical endpoint in the QCD phase diagram based on nonlocal covariant PNJL models including a vector interaction channel. The form factors of the covariant interaction are constrained by lattice QCD data for the quark propagator. The comparison of our results for the pressure including the pion contribution and the scaled pressure shift $ΔP / T^4$ vs $T/T_c$ with lattice QCD results shows a better agreement when Lorentzian formfactors for the nonlocal interactions and the wave function renormalization are considered. The strength of the vector coupl…
The behaviour of pseudoscalar mesons within the SU(3)PNJL-like models is considered for finite T and $μ_B$. We compare the pole approximation (Breit-Wigner) with the Beth-Uhlenbeck approach. We evaluate the $K/π$ ratios along the phase transition line in the T-$μ_B$ plane with constant and $T/μ_B$-dependent pion and strange quark chemical potentials. Using the model, we can show that the splitting of kaon and anti-kaon masses appears as a result of introduction of density and this explains the difference in the $K^+/π^+$ ratio and $K^-/π^-$ ratio at low $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ and their tendency to th…
We compute the equation of state of hadronic matter at finite temperature with zero net baryon density by the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model for interacting quarks in uniform background temporal color gauge fields. In the low temperature confining phase, unphysical thermal quark-antiquark excitations which would appear in the mean field approximation, are eliminated by enforcing vanishing expectation value of the "Polyakov-loop" of the background gauge field, while in the high temperature confining phase this expectation value is taken as close to unity allowing thermal excitations of free quarks an…
A nonlocal chiral quark model is consistently extended beyond mean field using a strict 1/Nc expansion scheme. The parameters of the nonlocal model are refitted so that the physical values of the pion mass and the weak pion decay constant are obtained. The size of the 1/Nc correction to the quark condensate is carefully studied and compared with the usual local Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model. It is found that even the sign of the corrections can be different. This can be attributed to the mesonic cut-off of the local model. The model is also applied to finite temperature. We find that the 1/Nc corre…
We study quark-hadron phase transition at finite temperature with zero net baryon density by the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model for interacting quarks in uniform background temporal color gauge fields. At low temperatures, unphysical thermal quark-antiquark excitations which would appear in the mean field approximation, are eliminated by en- forcing vanishing expectation value of the Polyakov-loop of the background gauge field, while at high temperatures this expectation value is taken as unity allowing thermal excitations of free quarks and antiquarks. Mesonic excitations in the low temperature pha…
I discuss recent results obtained by our group within the Nambu-Jona Lasinio model with the Polyakov loop. I focus on the two flavor version of the model, discussing the phase diagram in the $μ-T$ plane in the case in which electrical neutrality is required. One of the results is that pion condensation is not observed in our model when a physical mass for the light quarks is considered.
The possibility of the pion condensation phenomenon in cold and electrically neutral dense baryonic matter is investigated in $β$-equilibrium. For simplicity, the consideration is performed in the framework of a NJL model with two quark flavors at zero current quark mass and for rather small values of the baryon chemical potential, where the diquark condensation might be ignored. Two sets of model parameters are used. For the first one, the pion condensed phase with finite baryon density is realized. In this phase both electrons and the pion condensate take part in the neutralization of the qu…
The phase structure of two-flavor QCD is explored for thermal systems with finite baryon- and isospin-chemical potentials, mu_B and mu_{iso}, by using the Polyakov-loop extended Nambu--Jona-Lasinio (PNJL) model. The PNJL model with the scalar-type eight-quark interaction can reproduce lattice QCD data at not only mu_{iso}=mu_B=0 but also mu_{iso}>0 and mu_B=0. In the mu_{iso}-mu_{B}-T space, where T is temperature, the critical endpoint of the chiral phase transition in the mu_B-T plane at mu_{iso}=0 moves to the tricritical point of the pion-superfluidity phase transition in the mu_{iso}-T pl…
We study pion and kaon condensation using three-flavor chiral perturbation theory at finite isospin and strangeness quark chemical potentials μI and μS . The phase diagram consists of a vacuum phase and three distinct Bose condensed phases with condensates of charged pions as well as charged and neutral kaons. Adding electromagnetic interactions, a phase with a charged condensate becomes a Higgs phase and the resulting phase diagram is modified due to the electromagnetic mass splittings of the mesons. The results for the pion-condensed phase are applied to calculate mass-radius relation of pio…
We study aspects of the pion condensation in two-flavor neutral quark matter using the Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model of QCD at finite density. We investigate the role of electric charge neutrality, and explicit symmetry breaking via quark mass, both of which control the onset of the charged pion $(π^c)$ condensation. We show that the equality between the electric chemical potential and the in-medium pion mass, $μ_{e}=M_{π^-}$, as a threshold, persists even for a composite pion system in the medium, provided the transition to the pion condensed phase is of the second order. Moreover, we find that t…
We describe the Mott dissociation of pions and kaons within a Beth-Uhlenbeck approach based on the PNJL model, which allows for a unified description of bound, resonant and scattering states. Within this model we evaluate the temperature and chemical potential dependent modification of the phase shifts both in the pseudoscalar and scalar isovector meson channels for $N_f=2+1$ quark flavors. We show that the character change of the pseudoscalar bound states to resonances in the continuum at the Mott transition temperature is signaled by a jump of the phase shift at the threshold from $π$ to zer…
The equation of state of hadron resonance gas at finite temperature and baryon density is calculated taking into account finite-size effects within the excluded volume model. Contributions of known hadrons with masses up to 2 GeV are included in the zero-width approximation. Special attention is paid to the role of strange hadrons in the system with zero total strangeness. A density- dependent mean field is added to guarantee that the nuclear matter has a saturation point and a liquid-gas phase transition. The deconfined phase is described by the bag model with lowest order perturbative correc…
A schematic NJL-type model is employed to investigate kaon and pion condensation in deconfined quark matter in the color-flavor locked (CFL) phase, explicitly referring to quark degrees of freedom. To that end we allow for non-vanishing pseudoscalar diquark condensates in addition to the scalar ones which constitute the CFL phase. Color neutrality is ensured by the appropriate choice of color chemical potentials. The dependence of the free energy in the Goldstone condensed phases on quark masses and charge chemical potentials is found to be in good qualitative -- in most cases also quantitativ…
