We extend our work on QCD thermodynamics with 2+1 quark flavors at nonzero chemical potential to finer lattices with $N_t=6$. We study the equation of state and other thermodynamic quantities, such as quark number densities and susceptibilities, and compare them with our previous results at $N_t=4$. We also calculate the effects of the addition of the charm and bottom quarks on the equation of state at zero and nonzero chemical potential. These effects are important for cosmological studies of the early Universe.
We show that the quark condensates for the two light up and down flavors can have significantly different values in the hadronic phase at nonzero temperature, baryon and isospin chemical potentials. We quantify this difference using a simple model.
Lattice QCD at finite chemical potential is difficult due to the sign problem. We use stochastic quantization and complex Langevin dynamics to study this issue. First results for QCD in the hopping expansion are encouraging. U(1) and SU(3) one link models are used to gain further insight into why the method appears to be successful.
The staggered fermion determinant is complex when the quark chemical potential mu is nonzero. Its fourth root, used in simulations with dynamical fermions, will have phase ambiguities that become acute when Re mu is sufficiently large. We show how to resolve these ambiguities, but our prescription only works very close to the continuum limit. We argue that this regime is far from current capabilities. Other procedures require being even closer to the continuum limit, or fail altogether, because of unphysical discontinuities in the measure. At zero temperature the breakdown is expected when Re …
The three-dimensional SU(3) spin model is an effective Polyakov loop model for QCD at nonzero temperature and density. It suffers from a sign problem at nonzero chemical potential. We revisit this model using complex Langevin dynamics and assess in particular the justification of this approach, using analyticity at small mu^2 and the criteria for correctness developed recently. Finite-stepsize effects are discussed in some detail and a higher-order algorithm is employed to eliminate leading stepsize corrections. Our results strongly indicate that complex Langevin dynamics is reliable in this t…
We summarise recent progress in simulating QCD at nonzero baryon density using complex Langevin dynamics. After a brief outline of the main idea, we discuss gauge cooling as a means to control the evolution. Subsequently we present a status report for heavy dense QCD and its phase structure, full QCD with staggered quarks, and full QCD with Wilson quarks, both directly and using the hopping parameter expansion to all orders.
These lecture notes contain an elementary introduction to lattice QCD at nonzero chemical potential. Topics discussed include chemical potential in the continuum and on the lattice; the sign, overlap and Silver Blaze problems; the phase boundary at small chemical potential; imaginary chemical potential; and complex Langevin dynamics. An incomplete overview of other approaches is presented as well. These lectures are meant for postgraduate students and postdocs with an interest in extreme QCD. A basic knowledge of lattice QCD is assumed but not essential. Some exercises are included at the end.
We compute the equation of state of isospin asymmetric QCD at zero and non-zero temperatures using direct simulations of lattice QCD with three dynamical flavors at physical quark masses. In addition to the pressure and the trace anomaly and their behavior towards the continuum limit, we will particularly discuss the extraction of the speed of sound. Furthermore, we discuss first steps towards the extension of the EoS to small non-zero baryon chemical potentials via Taylor expansion.
We use the Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model to study the effects of the isospin chemical potential on the QCD phase diagram at nonzero temperature and baryon chemical potential. We find that the phase diagram is qualitatively altered by a small isospin chemical potential. There are two first order phase transitions that end in two critical endpoints, and there are two crossovers at low baryon chemical potential. These results have important consequences for systems where both baryon and isospin chemical potentials are nonzero, such as heavy ion collision experiments. Our results are in complete agree…
We use a hadron resonance gas model to study the QCD phase diagram at nonzero temperature, baryon, isospin and strangeness chemical potentials. We determine the temperature of the transition from the hadronic phase to the quark gluon plasma phase using two different methods. We find that the critical temperatures derived in both methods are in very good agreement. We find that the critical surface has a small curvature. We also find that the critical temperature's dependence on the baryon chemical potential at zero isospin chemical potential is almost identical to its dependence on the isospin…
In a Euclidean space functional integral treatment of the free energy of QCD, a chemical potential enters only through the functional determinant of the Dirac operator which for any flavor is $\dslash + m - μ_f γ_0$ (where $μ_f$ is the chemical potential for the given flavor). Any nonzero $μ$ alters all of the eigenvalues of the Dirac operator relative to the $μ=0$ value, leading to a naive expectation that the determinant is altered and which thereby alters the free energy. Phenomenologically, this does not occur at T=0 for sufficiently small $μ$, in contradiction to this naive expectation. T…
We show that QCD Dirac spectra well below Lambda_{QCD}, both at zero and at nonzero chemical potential, can be obtained from a chiral Lagrangian. At nonzero chemical potential Goldstone bosons with nonzero baryon number condense beyond a critical value. Such superfluid phase transition is likely to occur in any system with a chemical potential with the quantum numbers of the Goldstone bosons. We discuss the phase diagram for one such system, QCD with two colors, and show the existence of a tricritical point in an effective potential approach.
We investigate the phase diagram of QCD with heavy quarks at finite temperature and chemical potential in the context of background field methods. In particular, we use a massive extension of the Landau-DeWitt gauge which is motivated by previous studies of the deconfinement phase transition in pure Yang-Mills theories. We show that a simple one-loop calculation is able to capture the richness of the phase diagram in the heavy quark region, both at real and imaginary chemical potential. Moreover, dimensionless ratios of quantities directly measurable in numerical simulations are in good agreem…
We present arguments suggesting that large size overlapping instantons are the driving mechanism of the confinement-deconfinement phase transition at nonzero chemical potential mu. The arguments are based on the picture that instantons at very large chemical potential in the weak coupling regime are localized configurations with finite size rho~1/mu. At the same time, the same instantons at smaller chemical potential in the strong coupling regime are well represented by the so-called instanton-quarks with fractional topological charge 1/Nc. We estimate the critical chemical potential mu_c(T) w…
We give analytical and numerical solutions for the zero modes of the Dirac operator in topological SU(2) gauge backgrounds at nonzero chemical potential. Continuation from imaginary to real chemical potential is used to systematically derive analytical zero modes for calorons at arbitrary holonomy and, in particular limits, for instantons and dyons (magnetic monopoles). For the latter a spherical ansatz is explored as well. All the zero mode exhibit stronger peaks at the core and negative regions in their densities. We discuss the structure of the corresponding overlap matrix elements. For dis…
We study the effective action for strong-coupling lattice QCD with one-component staggered fermions in the case of nonzero chemical potential and zero temperature. The structure of this action suggests that at large chemical potentials its ground state is a crystalline `chiral density wave' that spontaneously breaks chiral symmetry and translation invariance. In mean-field theory, on the other hand, we find that this state is unstable. We show that lattice artifacts are partly responsible for this, and suggest that if this phase exists in QCD, then finding it in Monte-Carlo simulations would r…
Recently, a non-Hermitian chiral random matrix model was proposed to describe the eigenvalues of the QCD Dirac operator at nonzero chemical potential. This matrix model can be constructed from QCD by mapping it to an equivalent matrix model which has the same symmetries as QCD with chemical potential. Its microscopic spectral correlations are conjectured to be identical to those of the QCD Dirac operator. We investigate this conjecture by comparing large ensembles of Dirac eigenvalues in quenched SU(3) lattice QCD at nonzero chemical potential to the analytical predictions of the matrix model.…
We study the thermodynamic properties of QCD at nonzero isospin chemical potential using improved staggered quarks at physical quark masses. In particular, we discuss the determination of the equation of state at zero and nonzero temperatures and show results. Using the results for the isospin density $n_I$, we also determine the phase diagram in the $(n_I,T)$-plane.
In nonzero magnetic field, the magnetic properties and thermodynamics of the quantum-chromodynamic (QCD) matter is studied in the hadron resonance gas and the Polyakov linear-sigma models and compared with recent lattice calculations. Both models are fairly suited to describe the degrees of freedom in the hadronic phase. The partonic ones are only accessible by the second model. It is found that the QCD matter has paramagnetic properties, which monotonically depend on the temperature and are not affected by the hadron-quark phase-transition. Furthermore, raising the magnetic field strength inc…
We model the deconfinement phase transition in quantum chromodynamics at nonzero baryon number density and large quark mass by extending the flux tube model (three-state, three-dimensional Potts model) to nonzero chemical potential. In a direct numerical simulation we confirm mean-field-theory predictions that the deconfinement transition does not occur in a baryon-rich environment.
We have extended the Polyakov-Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (PNJL) model for two degenerate flavours to include the isospin chemical potential ($μ_I$). All the diagonal and mixed derivatives of pressure with respect to the quark number (proportional to baryon number) chemical potential ($μ_0$) and isospin chemical potential upto sixth order have been extracted at $μ_0 = μ_I = 0$. These derivatives give the generalized susceptibilities with respect to quark and isospin numbers. Similar estimates for the flavour diagonal and off-diagonal susceptibilities are also presented. Comparison to Lattice QCD (LQCD)…
We study lattice QCD at non-vanishing chemical potential using the complex Langevin equation. We compare the results with multi-parameter reweighting both from $μ=0$ and phase quenched ensembles. We find a good agreement for lattice spacings below $\approx$0.15 fm. On coarser lattices the complex Langevin approach breaks down. Four flavors of staggered fermions are used on $N_t=4, 6$ and 8 lattices. For one ensemble we also use two flavors to investigate the effects of rooting.
We study QCD at non-zero quark density, zero temperature, infinite coupling using the Glasgow algorithm. An improved complex zero analysis gives a critical point μ_c in agreement with that of chiral symmetry restoration computed with strong coupling expansions, and monomer-dimer simulations. We observe, however, two unphysical critical points: the onset for the number density μ_o, and μ_s the saturation threshold, coincident with pathological onsets observed in past quenched QCD calculations. An analysis of the probability distributions for particle number supports our physical interpretation …
We show that in the microscopic domain of QCD (also known as the $ε$-domain) at nonzero chemical potential the average phase factor of the fermion determinant is nonzero for $μ< m_π/2$ and is exponentially suppressed for larger values of the chemical potential. This follows from the chiral Lagrangian that describes the low-energy limit of the expectation value of the phase factor. Explicit expressions for the average phase factor are derived using a random matrix formulation of the zero momentum limit of this chiral Lagrangian.
We have recently given a construction of the overlap Dirac operator at nonzero quark chemical potential. Here, we introduce a quark chemical potential in the domain-wall fermion formalism and show that our earlier result is reproduced if the extent of the fifth dimension is taken to infinity and its lattice spacing is taken to zero. We also extend this result to include a bare quark mass, consider its continuum limit, and prove a number of properties of the overlap operator at nonzero quark chemical potential. In particular, we show that the relation between the anomaly and the index of the ov…
We determine the equation of state of QCD for nonzero chemical potentials via a Taylor expansion of the pressure. The results are obtained for N_f=2+1 flavors of quarks with physical masses, on various lattice spacings. We present results for the pressure, interaction measure, energy density, entropy density, and the speed of sound for small chemical potentials. At low temperatures we compare our results with the Hadron Resonance Gas model. We also express our observables along trajectories of constant entropy over particle number. A simple parameterization is given (the Matlab/Octave script p…
We introduce a random matrix model with the symmetries of QCD at finite temperature and chemical potentials for baryon number and isospin. We analyze the phase diagram of this model in the chemical potential plane for different temperatures and quark masses. We find a rich phase structure with five different phases separated by both first and second order lines. The phases are characterized by the pion condensate and the chiral condensate for each of the flavors. In agreement with lattice simulations, we find that in the phase with zero pion condensate the critical temperature depends in the s…
In this talk I review the current status of lattice QCD calculations at nonzero temperature and density. I focus on the QCD phase structure and bulk QCD thermodynamics at zero and nonzero chemical potentials.
We present results for the QCD equation of state with nonzero chemical potential using the Taylor expansion method with terms up to sixth order in the expansion. Our calculations are performed on asqtad 2+1 quark flavor lattices at $N_t=4$.
The relation between the spectral density of the QCD Dirac operator at nonzero baryon chemical potential and the chiral condensate is investigated. We use the analytical result for the eigenvalue density in the microscopic regime which shows oscillations with a period that scales as 1/V and an amplitude that diverges exponentially with the volume $V=L^4$. We find that the discontinuity of the chiral condensate is due to the whole oscillating region rather than to an accumulation of eigenvalues at the origin. These results also extend beyond the microscopic regime to chemical potentials $μ\sim …
In this paper we test the complex Langevin algorithm for numerical simulations of a random matrix model of QCD with a first order phase transition to a phase of finite baryon density. We observe that a naive implementation of the algorithm leads to phase quenched results, which were also derived analytically in this article. We test several fixes for the convergence issues of the algorithm, in particular the method of gauge cooling, the shifted representation, the deformation technique and reweighted complex Langevin, but only the latter method reproduces the correct analytical results in the …
We present a method of simulating lattice QCD at nonzero chemical potential in the chiral limit. By adding a weak four-fermi interaction to the standard staggered fermion SU(3) QCD action, we produce an algorithm in which the limit of massless fermions is well-behaved and physical. Using configurations at zero chemical potential, and an exact fugacity expansion of the fermion determinant, we can simulate QCD at nonzero chemical potential and evade the notorious problem of the complex action. Small lattice simulations give physical results: At strong gauge coupling the critical chemical potenti…
We present results for the QCD equation of state, quark densities and susceptibilities at nonzero chemical potential, using 2+1 flavor asqtad ensembles with $N_t=4$. The ensembles lie on a trajectory of constant physics for which $m_{ud}\approx0.1m_s$. The calculation is performed using the Taylor expansion method with terms up to sixth order in $μ/T$.
The static longitudinal and transverse gluon propagators in the Landau gauge are studied in $2+1$ lattice QCD with nonzero isospin chemical potential $μ_I$. Parameterization of the momentum dependence of the propagators is provided for all values of the chemical potential under study. We find that the longitudinal propagator is infrared suppressed at nonzero $μ_I$ with suppression increasing with increasing $μ_I$. It is found, respectively, that the electric screening mass is increasing with increasing $μ_I$. Additionally, we analyze the difference between two propagators as a function of the …
We study the effect of topology for a random matrix model of QCD at nonzero imaginary chemical potential or nonzero temperature. Non-universal fluctuations of Dirac eigenvalues lead to normalization factors that contribute to the $θ$-dependence of the partition function. These normalization factors have to be canceled in order to reproduce the $θ$-dependence of the QCD partition function. The reason for this behavior is that the topological domain of the Dirac spectrum (the region of the Dirac spectrum that is sensitive to the topological charge) extends beyond the microscopic domain at nonzer…
SU(2) lattice gauge theory with four flavors of quarks is simulated at nonzero chemical potential mu and temperature T and the results are compared to the predictions of Effective Lagrangians. Simulations on 16^4 lattices indicate that at zero T the theory experiences a second order phase transition to a diquark condensate state which is well described by mean field theory. Nonzero T and mu are studied on 12^3 times 6 lattices. For low T, increasing mu takes the system through a line of second order phase transitions to a diquark condensed phase. Increasing T at high mu, the system passes thro…
SU(2) lattice gauge theory with four flavors of quarks is studied at nonzero chemical potential $μ$ and temperature $T$ by computer simulation and Effective Lagrangian techniques. Simulations are done on $8^4$, $8^3 \times 4$ and $12^3 \times 6$ lattices and the diquark condensate, chiral order parameter, Wilson line, fermion energy and number densities are measured. Simulations at a fixed, nonzero quark mass provide evidence for a tricritical point in the $μ$-$T$ plane associated with diquark condensation. For low $T$, increasing $μ$ takes the system through a line of second order phase trans…
The Dirac spectrum of QCD with dynamical fermions at nonzero chemical potential is characterized by three regions, a region with a constant eigenvalue density, a region where the eigenvalue density shows oscillations that grow exponentially with the volume and the remainder of the complex plane where the eigenvalue density is zero. In this paper we derive the phase diagram of the Dirac spectrum from a chiral Lagrangian. We show that the constant eigenvalue density corresponds to a pion condensed phase while the strongly oscillating region is given by a kaon condensed phase. The normal phase wi…
We show how to introduce a quark chemical potential in the overlap Dirac operator. The resulting operator satisfies a Ginsparg-Wilson relation and has exact zero modes. It is no longer gamma_5-hermitian, but its nonreal eigenvalues still occur in pairs. We compute the spectral density of the operator on the lattice and show that, for small eigenvalues, the data agree with analytical predictions of nonhermitian chiral random matrix theory for both trivial and nontrivial topology.
The overlap Dirac operator at nonzero quark chemical potential involves the computation of the sign function of a non-Hermitian matrix. In this talk we present iterative Krylov subspace approximations, with deflation of critical eigenvalues, which we developed to compute the operator on large lattices. We compare the accuracy and efficiency of two alternative approximations based on the Arnoldi and on the two-sided Lanczos method. The short recurrences used in the latter method make it faster and more effective for realistic lattice simulations.
Phase diagram of the chiral random matrix model with U(1)A breaking term is studied with the quark chemical potentials varied independently at zero temperature, by taking the chiral and meson condensates as the order parameters. Although, without the U(1)A breaking term, chiral transition of each flavor can happen separately responding to its chemical potential, the U(1)A breaking terms mix the chiral condensates and correlate the phase transitions. In the three flavor case, we find that there are mixings between the meson and chiral condensates due to the U(1)A anomaly, which makes the meson …
We extend a previous investigation of the QCD phase diagram with heavy quarks in the context of background field methods by including the two-loop corrections to the background field effective potential. The nonperturbative dynamics in the pure-gauge sector is modeled by a phenomenological gluon mass term in the Landau-DeWitt gauge-fixed action, which results in an improved perturbative expansion. We investigate the phase diagram at nonzero temperature and (real or imaginary) chemical potential. Two-loop corrections yield an improved agreement with lattice data as compared to the leading-order…
We identify the Goldstone modes appropriate to the low and high density phases of SU(2) lattice gauge theory with staggered fermions. We present hybrid Monte Carlo simulation results for susceptibilities on a 6^4 lattice at beta=1.5, m=0.05. We specify how to implement a diquark source term in a lattice simulation and present first measurements of the lattice diquark condensate as a function of the diquark source.
We investigate the eigenvalue spectrum of the staggered Dirac matrix in two color QCD at finite chemical potential. The profiles of complex eigenvalues close to the origin are compared to a complex generalization of the chiral Gaussian Symplectic Ensemble, confirming its predictions for weak and strong non-Hermiticity. They differ from the QCD symmetry class with three colors by a level repulsion from both the real and imaginary axis.
We compare analytic predictions of non-Hermitian chiral random matrix theory with the complex Dirac operator eigenvalue spectrum of two-colour lattice gauge theory with dynamical fermions at nonzero chemical potential. The Dirac eigenvalues come in complex conjugate pairs, making the action of this theory real, and positive for our choice of two staggered flavours. This enables us to use standard Monte-Carlo in testing the influence of chemical potential and quark mass on complex eigenvalues close to the origin. We find an excellent agreement between the analytic predictions and our data for t…
We calculate the three-loop thermodynamic potential of QCD at finite temperature and chemical potential(s) using the hard-thermal-loop perturbation theory (HTLpt) reorganization of finite temperature and density QCD. The resulting analytic thermodynamic potential allows us to compute the pressure, energy density, and entropy density of the quark-gluon plasma. Using these we calculate the trace anomaly, speed of sound, and second-, fourth-, and sixth-order quark number susceptibilities. For all observables considered we find good agreement between our three-loop HTLpt calculations and available…
We introduce three universality classes of chiral random matrix ensembles with a nonzero chemical potential and real, complex or quaternion real matrix elements. In the thermodynamic limit we find that the distribution of the eigenvalues in the complex plane does not depend on the Dyson index, and is given by the solution proposed by Stephanov. For a finite number of degrees of freedom, $N$, we find an accumulation of eigenvalues on the imaginary axis for real matrices, whereas for quaternion real matrices we find a depletion of eigenvalues in this domain. This effect is of order $1/\sqrt N$. …
We investigate the eigenvalue spectrum of the staggered Dirac matrix in SU(3) and U(1) gauge theory as well as in full QCD with two colors and finite chemical potential. Along the strong-coupling axis up to the phase transition, the low-lying Dirac spectrum of these quantum field theories is well described by random matrix theory and exhibits universal behavior. Related results for gauge theories with minimal coupling are discussed in the chirally symmetric phase and no universality is seen for the microscopic spectral densities.
In this talk we present the results published recently in Ref. [1], where we showed how to introduce a quark chemical potential in the overlap Dirac operator. The resulting operator satisfies a Ginsparg-Wilson relation and has exact zero modes. It is no longer gamma_5-Hermitian, but its nonreal eigenvalues still occur in pairs. We compute the spectral density of the operator on the lattice and show that, for small eigenvalues, the data agree with analytical predictions of non-Hermitian chiral random matrix theory for both trivial and nontrivial topology. We also explain an observed change in t…
The chiral condensate in QCD at zero temperature does not depend on the quark chemical potential (up to one third the nucleon mass), whereas the spectral density of the Dirac operator shows a strong dependence on the chemical potential. The cancellations which make this possible also occur on the microscopic scale, where they can be investigated by means of a random matrix model. We show that they can be understood in terms of orthogonality properties of orthogonal polynomials. In the strong non-Hermiticity limit they are related to integrability properties of the spectral density. As a by-pro…
In this letter we give the equation of state of QCD at finite temperatures and densities. The recently proposed overlap improving multi-parameter reweighting technique is used to determine observables at nonvanishing chemical potentials. Our results are obtained by studying n_f=2+1 dynamical staggered quarks with semi-realistic masses on N_t=4 lattices.
We consider asymptotically free nonlinear sigma models in two dimensions which, due to their internal symmetries, allow for a conserved charge. Introducing nonzero chemical potential for the SO(2) subgroup of the symmetry group, we discuss two expected phase transitions, which are related to charge condensation and percolation of merons, respectively. The latter are topological objects with half integer charge similar to vortices in the abelianized \emph{O(2)} theory, that emerge for large chemical potentials due to the suppression of the complementary field components. We conjecture a particu…
The behavior of quenched QCD at nonzero chemical potential $μ$ has been a long-standing puzzle. An explicit solution is found using the random matrix approach to chiral symmetry breaking. At nonzero $μ$ the quenched QCD is not a simple $n\to0$ limit of a theory with $n$ quarks: a naive `replica trick' fails. A limit that leads to the quenched QCD is that of a theory with $2n$ quarks: $n$ quarks with original action and $n$ quarks with conjugate action.
SU(2) lattice gauge theory with four flavors of quarks is simulated at nonzero chemical potential $μ$ and temperature $T$ and the results are compared to the predictions of Effective Lagrangians. Simulations on $16^4$ lattices indicate that at zero $T$ the theory experiences a second order phase transition to a diquark condensate state. Several methods of analysis, including equation of state fits suggested by Chiral Perturbation Theory, suggest that mean-field scaling describes this critical point. Nonzero $T$ and $μ$ are studied on $12^3 \times 6$ lattices. For low $T$, increasing $μ$ takes …
Using an integration formula recently derived by Conrey, Farmer and Zirnbauer, we calculate the expectation value of the phase factor of the fermion determinant for the staggered lattice QCD action in one dimension. We show that the chemical potential can be absorbed into the quark masses; the theory is in the same chiral symmetry class as QCD in three dimensions at zero chemical potential. In the limit of a large number of colors and fixed number of lattice points, chiral symmetry is broken spontaneously, and our results are in agreement with expressions based on a chiral Lagrangian. In this …
We consider QCD at strong coupling with scalar quarks coupled to a chemical potential. Performing the link integrals we present a diagrammatic representation of the path integral weight. It is based on mesonic and baryonic building blocks, in close analogy to fermionic QCD. Likewise, the baryon loops are subject to a manifest conservation of the baryon number. The sign problem is expected to disappear in this representation and we do confirm this for three flavors, where a scalar baryon can be built and thus a dependence on the chemical potential occurs. For higher flavor number we analyse exa…
We determine the pseudo-critical line in the temperature - chemical potential plane of 2-color QCD by direct Monte Carlo simulations and by analytic continuation from imaginary chemical potential.
Because of relativistic off-center motion of the charged spectators and the local momentum-imbalance experienced by the participants, a huge magnetic field is likely generated in high-energy collisions. The influence of such short-lived magnetic field on the QCD phase-transition(s) shall be analysed. From Polyakov linear-sigma model, we study the chiral phase-transition and the magnetic response and susceptibility in dependence on temperature, density and magnetic field strength. The systematic measurements of the phase-transition characterizing signals, such as the fluctuations, the dynamical…
We study the QCD phase diagram at nonzero baryon and isospin chemical potentials using the 1/Nc expansion. We find that there are two phase transitions between the hadronic phase and the quark gluon plasma phase. We discuss the consequences of this result for the universality class of the critical endpoint at nonzero baryon and zero isospin chemical potential.
We determine the phase diagram of QCD on the μ-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 …
We present a lattice study of fluctuations and correlations among the conserved charges baryon number and strangeness in (2+1)-flavor QCD. The lattice calculations are based on a Taylor expansion of the pressure. Results are presented at zero and nonzero density on lattices with four and six time slices, corresponding to a lattice spacing of $a\approx 0.25$ fm and $a\approx 0.16$ fm, respectively. The quark masses are almost physical, i.e. the light quark mass has been chosen to one tenth of the physical strange quark mass while the strange quark mass has been set to its physical value. We fin…
