The properties of matter at finite baryon densities play an important role for the astrophysics of compact stars as well as for heavy ion collisions or the description of nuclear matter. Because of the sign problem of the quark determinant, lattice QCD cannot be simulated by standard Monte Carlo at finite baryon densities. I review alternative attempts to treat dense QCD with an effective lattice theory derived by analytic strong coupling and hopping expansions, which close to the continuum is valid for heavy quarks only, but shows all qualitative features of nuclear physics emerging from QCD. In particular, the nuclear liquid gas transition and an equation of state for baryons can be calculated directly from QCD. A second effective theory based on strong coupling methods permits studies of the phase diagram in the chiral limit on coarse lattices.
We compute quark and gluon propagators in 2-colour QCD at large baryon chemical potential mu. The gluon propagator is found to be antiscreened at intermediate mu and screened at large mu. The quark propagator is drastically modified in the superfluid region as a result of the formation of a superfluid gap.
The infamous sign problem makes it impossible to probe dense (baryon density $μ_B>0$) QCD at temperatures near or below the deconfinement threshold. As a workaround, one can explore QCD-like theories such as two-colour QCD (QC2D) which don't suffer from this sign problem but are qualitively similar to real QCD. Previous studies on smaller lattice volumes have investigated deconfinement and colour superfluid to normal matter transitions. In this study we look at a larger lattice volume $N_s=24$ in an attempt to disentangle finite volume and finite temperature effects. We also fit to a larger nu…
A Coulomb gas representation of dense-matter QCD is derived from a dual transformation of the low-energy effective Lagrangian. The point-like charges Q=+1,-1 of the gas are identified with the instantons and anti-instantons of such topological charges. An instanton repels another instanton with the same force as it attracts an anti-instanton, in contrast to the semiclassical interaction.
The isospin chemical potential region is known as the sign-problem free region of quantum chromodynamics (QCD). In this paper, we introduce the isospin chemical potential to the three-dimensional three-state Potts model to mimic the dense QCD; e.g., the QCD effective model with heavy quarks at finite density. We call it as QCD-like Potts model. The QCD-like Potts model does not have the sign problem, but we can expect that it shares some properties with QCD. Since we can obtain the non-approximated Potts spin configuration at finite isospin chemical potential where the simple Metropolis algori…
After combined character and hopping expansions and integration over the spatial gauge links, lattice QCD reduces to a three-dimensional $SU(3)$ Polyakov loop model with complicated interactions. A simple truncation of the effective theory is valid for heavy quarks on reasonably fine lattices and can be solved by linked cluster expansion in its effective couplings. This was used ealier to demonstrate the onset transition to baryon matter in the cold and dense regime. Repeating these studies for general $N_c$, one finds that for large $N_c$ the onset transition becomes first-order, and the pres…
We have computed the chiral susceptibility in quark-gluon plasma in presence of finite chemical potential and weak magnetic field within hard thermal loop approximation. First we construct the massive effective quark propagator in a thermomagnetic medium. Then we obtain completely analytic expression for the chiral susceptibility in weak magnetic field approximation. In the absence of magnetic field the thermal chiral susceptibility increases in presence of finite chemical potential. The effect of thermomagnetic correction is found to be very marginal as temperature is the dominant scale in we…
A previously derived three-dimensional effective lattice theory describing the thermodynamics of QCD with heavy quarks in the cold and dense region is extended through order $\sim u^5κ^8$ in the combined character and hopping expansion of the original four-dimensional Wilson action. The systematics of the effective theory is investigated to determine its range of validity in parameter space. We demonstrate the severe cut-off effects due to lattice saturation, which afflict any lattice results at finite baryon density independent of the sign problem or the quality of effective theories, and whi…
We study two-color QCD with two flavors of Wilson fermion as a function of quark chemical potential mu and temperature T, for two different lattice spacings and two different quark masses. We find that the quarkyonic region, where the behaviour of the quark number density and the diquark condensate are described by a Fermi sphere of almost free quarks distorted by a BCS gap, extends to larger chemical potentials with decreasing lattice spacing or quark mass. In both cases, the quark number density also approaches its non-interacting value. The pressure at low temperature is found to approach t…
We investigate modifications of hadron masses at finite quark chemical potential in two-flavor and two-color QCD, of which the data are available from lattice simulations, within a linear sigma model based on approximate Pauli-Gursey $SU(4)$ symmetry. The model describes not only ground-state scalar diquarks and pseudo-scalar mesons but also the excited pseudo-scalar diquarks and scalar mesons; each ground-state diquark (meson) has the corresponding excited diquark (hadron) with opposite parity as a chiral partner. Effects of chiral symmetry breaking and diquark condensates are incorporated by…
This document is one of a series of whitepapers from the USQCD collaboration. Here, we outline the opportunities for, prospects of and challenges to the lattice QCD calculations relevant for the understanding of the phases and properties of hot-dense QCD matter. This program of lattice QCD calculations is relevant to current and upcoming heavy-ion experimental programs at RHIC and LHC.
We review the proposal to resum the physics of hard thermal loops in the thermodynamics of the quark-gluon plasma through nonperturbative expressions for entropy and density obtained from a Phi-derivable two-loop approximation. A comparison with the recently solved large-N_f limit of hot QCD is performed, and some updates, in particular on quark number susceptibilities, are made.
Transitions between centre sectors are related to confinement in pure Yang-Mills theories. We study the impact of these transitions in QCD-like theories for which centre symmetry is explicitly broken by the presence of matter. For low temperatures, we provide numerical evidence that centre transitions do occur with matter merely providing a bias towards the trivial centre sector until centre symmetry is spontaneously broken at high temperatures. The phenomenological consequences of these transitions for dense hadron matter are illustrated in an SU(3) effective quark theory: centre dressed quar…
We study the chiral separation effect (CSE) in two-color and two-flavor QCD (QC$_2$D) to delineate quasiparticle pictures in dense matter from low to high temperatures. Both massless and massive quarks are discussed. We particularly focus on the high density domain where diquarks form a color singlet condensate with the electric charge $1/3$. The condensate breaks baryon number and $U(1)_A$ axial symmetry, and induces the electromagnetic Meissner effects. Within a quark quasiparticle picture, we compute the chiral separation conductivity at one-loop. We have checked that Nambu-Goldstone modes,…
We obtain the equation of state (EoS) and the sound velocity for 2-color QCD at low temperature and high density and find that in the superfluid phase, $c_s^2/c^2 >1/3$, where $1/3$ is the value at the relativistic limit. Several independent Monte Carlo studies on 2-color QCD have been conducted intensively in recent years. These works have shown a clear evidence of phase transition between hadronic and superfluid phases. In our paper[1], we have investigated the EoS and sound velocity in both phases. Our result is consistent with chiral perturbation theory in a low $μ$ regime of the superflui…
Relativistic heavy-ion collisions and the lattice QCD Monte-Carlo simulations are important ``experimental'' tools for investigating the properties of the medium described by QCD under extreme conditions. After briefly examining their characteristics, I pick up the study of the critical points in QCD as an example of the research subjects that these two tools play complementary roles and discuss recent topics that have been achieved with the use of each tool.
We investigate 2-colour QCD with 2 flavours of Wilson fermion at nonzero temperature T and quark chemical potential mu, with a pion mass of 700 MeV (m_pi/m_rho=0.8). From temperature scans at fixed mu we find that the critical temperature for the superfluid to normal transition depends only very weakly on mu above the onset chemical potential, while the deconfinement crossover temperature is clearly decreasing with mu. We also present results for the Landau-gauge gluon propagator in the hot and dense medium.
We obtain the equation of state (EoS) for two-color QCD at low temperature and high density from the lattice Monte Carlo simulation. We find that the velocity of sound exceeds the relativistic limit ($c_s^2/c^2=1/3$) after BEC-BCS crossover in the superfluid phase. Such an excess of the sound velocity is previously unknown from any lattice calculations for QCD-like theories. This finding might have a possible relevance to the EoS of neutron star matter revealed by recent measurements of neutron star masses and radii.
Using Monte Carlo simulations and extended mean field theory calculations we show that the $3$-dimensional $Z_3$ spin model with complex external fields has non-monotonic spatial correlators in some regions of its parameter space. This model serves as a proxy for heavy-dense QCD in $(3+1)$ dimensions. Non-monotonic spatial correlators are intrinsically related to a complex mass spectrum and a liquid-like (or crystalline) behavior. A liquid phase could have implications for heavy-ion experiments, where it could leave detectable signals in the spatial correlations of baryons.
This talk summarizes recent progress in lattice QCD for dense quark matter. The emphasis is on the insights obtained from analytical results derived within chiral perturbation theory.
Combining strong coupling and hopping expansion one can derive a dimensionally reduced effective theory of lattice QCD. This theory has a reduced sign problem, is amenable to analytic evaluation and was successfully used to study the cold and dense regime of QCD for sufficiently heavy quarks. We show results from the evaluation of the effective theory for arbitrary $N_c$ up to $κ^4$. The inclusion of gauge corrections is also investigated. We find that the onset transition to finite baryon number density steepens with growing $N_c$ even for $T \neq 0$. This suggests that in the large $N_c$ lim…
A Higgs description for the QCD vacuum in the limit of two quark flavors is proposed. Complete ``spontaneous breaking'' of color symmetry is realized by condensation of an adjoint quark-antiquark and a quark-quark pair. The vacuum is invariant under isospin symmetry applying color and flavor transformations simultaneously. All elementary excitations acquire integral charges. The dressed microscopic quark and gluon degrees of freedom can be identified with the macroscopic baryon and vector meson degrees of freedom. In addition to the nucleons we find soliton--type fermions with integer isospin.…
We investigate quantum chromodynamics with two colors at nonvanishing density using Dyson-Schwinger equations. Lattice methods do not have a complex action problem in this theory. Thus, we can benchmark our results and the effect of truncations directly by comparing with the corresponding lattice results. We do so for the gluon propagator, the chiral condensate, and the quark number density and test variations of the employed truncation to improve the agreement. Finally, we compare the effect of a truncation on the chiral and confinement/deconfinement transitions in the phase diagrams of QCD a…
The sign problem of QCD prevents standard lattice simulations to determine the phase diagram of strong interactions with a finite chemical potential directly. Complex Langevin simulations provide an alternative method to sample path integrals with complex weights. We report on our ongoing project to determine the phase diagram of QCD in the limit of heavy quarks (HDQCD) using Complex Langevin simulations.
Monte Carlo methods cannot probe far into the QCD phase diagram with a real chemical potential, due to the famous sign problem. Complex Langevin simulations, using adaptive step-size scaling and gauge cooling, are suited for sampling path integrals with complex weights. We report here on tests of the deconfinement transition in pure Yang-Mills SU(3) simulations and present an update on the QCD phase diagram in the limit of heavy and dense quarks.
We investigate the nuclear and the quark matter at finite real chemical potential ($μ_\mathrm{R}$) and low temperature from the viewpoint of the canonical sectors constructed via the imaginary chemical potential region. Based on the large $N_\mathrm{c}$ estimation, where $N_\mathrm{c}$ is the number of color, we can discuss the confinement-deconfinement nature at finite $μ_\mathrm{R}$ from the canonical sectors. We found the expectation that the sharp change of canonical sectors at $μ_\mathrm{R} \sim M_\mathrm{B}/N_\mathrm{c}$, where $M_\mathrm{B}$ is the lowest baryon mass, is happen in the l…
Centre sector transitions in QCD-like theories with dynamical quark matter are investigated. In the hadronic phase, these transitions still take place in the infinite volume at zero temperature limit despite of the explicit breaking of the centre symmetry by the matter fields. This finding is supported by simulations of the SU(2) Yang-Mills theory with Higgs matter. The phenomenological impact of the centre sector transitions for dense but confined matter is explained: centre dressed quarks acquire Bose statistics and form a so-called Fermi-Einstein condensate. This mechanism is further illust…
We study the Landau gauge gluon propagators in dense two-color QCD at quark chemical potential, $μ_q$, in the range from 0.5 to 1.0 GeV not reachable by the perturbative method at weak coupling. In order to take into account the non-perturbative effects, at tree level we use a massive Yang-Mills model for the Yang-Mills theory (or the Curci-Ferrari model) which has successfully described the lattice results of the gluon and ghost propagators in the Landau gauge. We couple quarks to this theory and compute the one-loop polarization effects in medium. The presence of the gluon mass significantly…
QCD at finite densities of heavy quarks is investigated using the density-of-states method. The phase factor expectation value of the quark determinant is calculated to unprecedented precision as a function of the chemical potential. Results are validated using those from a reweighting approach where the latter can produce a significant signal-to-noise ratio. We confirm the particle-hole symmetry at low temperatures, find a strong sign problem at intermediate values of the chemical potential, and an inverse Silver Blaze feature for chemical potentials close to the onset value: here, the phase …
We analytically study two-color QCD with an even number of flavors at high baryon density. This theory is free from the fermion sign problem. Chiral symmetry is broken spontaneously by the diquark condensate. Based on the symmetry breaking pattern we construct the low-energy effective Lagrangian for the Nambu-Goldstone bosons. We identify a new epsilon-regime at high baryon density in which the quark mass dependence of the partition function can be determined exactly. We also derive Leutwyler-Smilga-type spectral sum rules for the complex eigenvalues of the Dirac operator in terms of the fermi…
A surprisingly good holographic description of QCD can be obtained from naive five dimensional gauge theory on a truncated AdS space. We seek to improve the infra-red description of QCD in such models by using a more sophisticated metric and an action derived from string theory duals of chiral symmetry breaking. Our metric is smooth into the infra-red and the chiral condensate is a prediction of the dynamics. The theory reproduces QCD meson data at the 10% level.
Complex Langevin simulations have been able to successfully reproduce results from Monte Carlo methods in the region where the sign problem is mild and make predictions when it is exponentially hard. We present here our study of the QCD phase diagram and the boundary between the confined and deconfined phases in the limit of heavy and dense quarks (HDQCD) for 3 different lattice volumes. We also briefly discuss instabilities encountered in our simulations.
Euclidean dense matter generically suffers from the fermion sign problem. However, we argue that the sign problem is absent if one considers only low-energy degrees of freedom. Specifically, the low energy effective theory of dense QCD has positive Euclidean path integral measure, which allows one to establish rigorous inequalities showing that the color-flavor locked (CFL) phase is the true vacuum of three flavor, massless QCD. We then describe a method for simulating dense QCD on the lattice. We also discuss applications to electronic systems in condensed matter, such as generalized Hubbard …
We construct a low energy effective Lagrangian for the two-color QCD including the "vector" bosons (mesons with J^P=1^- and diquark baryons with J^P=1^+) in addition to the pseudo Nambu-Goldstone bosons with a degenerate mass M_π(mesons with J^P=0^- and baryons with J^P=0^+) based on the chiral symmetry breaking pattern of SU(2N_f) \to Sp(2N_f) in the framework of the hidden local symmetry. We investigate the dependence of the "vector" boson masses on the baryon number density μ_B. We show that the μ_B-dependence signals the phase transition of U(1)_B breaking. We find that it gives informatio…
The behavior of QCD at high baryon density and low temperature is crucial to understanding the properties of neutron stars and gravitational waves emitted during their mergers. In this paper we study small systems of baryons in periodic boundary conditions to probe the properties of QCD at high baryon density. By comparing calculations based on nucleon degrees of freedom to simple quark models we show that specific features of the nuclear spectrum, including shell structure and nucleon pairing, emerge if nucleons are the primary degrees of freedom. Very small systems should also be amenable to…
Complex Langevin simulations provide an alternative to sample path integrals with complex weights and therefore are suited to determine the phase diagram of QCD from first principles. Adaptive step-size scaling and gauge cooling are used to improve the convergence of our simulations. We present results for the phase diagram of QCD in the limit of heavy quarks and discuss the order of the phase transitions, which are studied by varying the spatial simulation volume.
The thermodynamics of QCD with sufficiently heavy dynamical quarks can be described by a three-dimensional Polyakov loop effective theory, obtained after a truncated character and hopping expansion. We investigate the resulting phase diagram for low temperatures by mean field methods. Taking into account chemical potentials for both baryon number and isospin, we obtain clear signals for a liquid-gas type transition to baryon matter at $μ_I=0$ and a Bose-Einstein condensation transition at $μ_B=0$, as well as for their connection when both chemical potentials are non-zero.
We conjecture that the confinement- deconfinement phase transition in QCD at large number of colors N and N_f\ll N at T\neq 0 and μ\neq 0 is triggered by the drastic change in θbehavior. The conjecture is motivated by the holographic model of QCD where confinement -deconfinement phase transition indeed happens precisely at the value of temperature T=T_c where θdependence experiences a sudden change in behavior[1]. The conjecture is also supported by quantum field theory arguments when the instanton calculations (which trigger the θdependence) are under complete theoretical control for T>T_c, s…
We study the properties of QCD at high baryon density in a finite volume where color superconductivity occurs. We derive exact sum rules for complex eigenvalues of the Dirac operator at finite chemical potential, and show that the Dirac spectrum is directly related to the color superconducting gap $Δ$. Also, we find a characteristic signature of color superconductivity: an X-shaped spectrum of partition function zeros in the complex quark mass plane near the origin, reflecting the $Z(2)_{L} \times Z(2)_{R}$ symmetry of the diquark pairing. Our results are universal in the domain $Δ^{-1} \ll L …
We investigate the Euclidean path integral formulation of QCD at finite baryon density and temperature. We show that the partition function Z can be written as a difference between two sums Z+ and Z-, each of which defines a partition function with positive weights. We call the sign problem severe if the ratio Z-/Z+ is nonzero in the infinite volume limit. This occurs only if, and generically always if, the associated free energy densities F+ and F- are equal in this limit. We present strong evidence here that the sign problem is severe at almost all points in the phase diagram, with the excep…
The properties of dense QCD matter are delineated through the construction of equations of state which should be consistent with the low and high density limits of QCD, nuclear laboratory experiments, and the neutron star observations. These constraints, together with the causality condition of the sound velocity, are used to develop the picture of hadron-quark continuity in which hadronic matter continuously transforms into quark matter (modulo small 1st order phase transitions). The resultant unified equation of state at zero temperature and $β$-equilibrium, which we call Quark-Hadron-Crosso…
We study the phase structure of QCD at high temperature and density by lattice QCD simulations adopting a histogram method. The quark mass dependence and the chemical potential dependence of the nature of phase transition are investigated focusing on the probability distribution function (histogram). The shape of the distribution function changes with the quark mass and chemical potential. Through the shape of the distribution, the critical surface which separates the first order transition and crossover regions in the heavy quark region is determined for the (2+1)-flavor case. Moreover, we de…
At finite density, lattice simulations are hindered by the well-known sign problem: for finite chemical potentials, the QCD action becomes complex and the Boltzmann weight $e^{-S}$ cannot be interpreted as a probability distribution to determine expectation values by Monte Carlo techniques. Different workarounds have been devised to study the QCD phase diagram, but their application is mostly limited to the region of small chemical potentials. The Lefschetz thimbles method takes a new approach in which one complexifies the theory and deforms the integration paths. By integrating over Lefschetz…
In this proceeding we present our first results of the study of the QCD Equation of State at non-zero baryon density and in external magnetic field. We focused on the first three non-vanishing expansion coefficients of pressure in chemical potential and their dependence on magnetic field. The study is carried out within lattice simulations with $N_f=2+1$ dynamical quarks with physical quark masses. To overcome the sign problem, the simulations are carried out at imaginary baryon chemical potential. Our results suggest that external magnetic field considerably enhances the expansion coefficient…
The cold and dense regime of the QCD phase diagram is to this day inaccessible to first principle lattice calculations owing to the sign problem. Here we present progress of an ongoing effort to probe this particularly difficult regime utilising a dimensionally reduced effective lattice theory with a significantly reduced sign problem. The effective theory is derived by combined character and hopping expansion and is valid for heavy quarks near the continuum. We show an extension of the effective theory to order $u^5κ^8$ in the cold regime. A linked cluster expansion is applied to the effectiv…
I review the Sign Problem hindering lattice QCD simulations of dense baryonic matter, focussing where possible on its physical relevance. The possibility of avoiding the Sign Problem via a duality transformation is also briefly considered. Finally, I review evidence for deconfinement at non-zero quark density in recent simulations of Two Color QCD.
We investigate the properties of the half-filling point in lattice QCD (LQCD), in particular the disappearance of the sign problem and the emergence of an apparent particle-hole symmetry, and try to understand where these properties come from by studying the heavy-dense fermion determinant and the corresponding strong-coupling partition function (which can be integrated analytically). We then add in a first step an effective Polyakov loop gauge action (which reproduces the leading terms in the character expansion of the Wilson gauge action) to the heavy-dense partition function and try to anal…
QCD at fixed baryon number can be formulated in terms of transfer matrices explicitly defined in the canonical sectors. In the heavy-dense limit, the fermionic contributions to the canonical partition functions in terms of Polyakov loops and quark occupation numbers turn out to be completely factorized in space. At low temperatures and infinitely strong coupling the sign problem is reduced by orders of magnitude for any baryon number as compared to the corresponding grand-canonical ensemble. In the canonical formulation it is straighforward to integrate out the Polyakov loops in the fermionic …
Heavy-Dense QCD (HDQCD) is a popular theory to investigate the sign problem in quantum field theory. Besides its physical applications, HDQCD is relatively easy to implement numerically: the fermionic degrees of freedom are integrated out, and the fermion determinant factorises into local ones. The theory has a sign problem, the severeness of which depends on the value of the chemical potential, which makes this theory ideal to test the reach of new algorithms. We use the LLR approach to obtain the probability distribution of the phase of the fermion determinant. Our goal is the calculation of…
