Upcoming experimental programs will look for signatures of a possible critical point in the QCD phase diagram in fluctuation observables. To understand and predict these signatures, one must account for the fact that the dynamics of any critical fluctuations must be out-of-equilibrium: because of critical slowing down, the fluctuations cannot stay in equilibrium as the droplet of QGP produced in a collision expands and cools. Furthermore, their out-of-equilibrium dynamics must also influence the hydrodynamic evolution of the cooling droplet. The recently developed Hydro+ formalism allows for a consistent description of both the hydrodynamics and the out-of-equilibrium fluctuations, including the feedback between them. We shall explicitly demonstrate how this works, setting up a Hydro+ simulation in a simplified setting: a rapidity-independent fireball undergoing radial flow with an equation of state in which we imagine a critical point close to the $μ_B=0$ axis of the phase diagram. Within this setup, we show that we can quantitatively capture non-equilibrium phenomena, including critical fluctuations over a range of scales and memory effects. Furthermore, we illustrate the interplay between the dynamics of the fluctuations and the hydrodynamic flow of the fireball: as the fluid cools and flows, the dynamical fluctuations lag relative to how they would evolve if they stayed in equilibrium; there is then a backreaction on the flow itself due to the out-of-equilibrium fluctuations; and, in addition, the radial flow transports fluctuations outwards by advection. Within our model, we find that the backreaction from the out-of-equilibrium fluctuations does not yield dramatically large effects in the hydrodynamic variables. Further work will be needed in order to check this quantitative conclusion in other settings but, if it persists, this will considerably simplify future modelling.
We give a general overview about the approaches to study the phase diagram of QCD. Thereafter, we examine the evolution of a fireball in a chiral fluid dynamic model including nonequilibrium effects.
I show an updated QCD phase diagram with recent developments from chiral effective theories and phenomenological models. Expected signals of a QCD critical point accessible in heavy-ion collisions are also discussed. In particular, non-monotonic behavior of fluctuations associated with conserved charges is focused on.
Current status of theoretical researches on the QCD phase diagram at finite temperature and baryon chemical potential is reviewed with special emphasis on the origin of various phases and their symmetry breaking patterns. Topics include; quark deconfinement, chiral symmetry restoration, order of the phase transitions, QCD critical point(s), colour superconductivity, various inhomogeneous states and implications from QCD-like theories.
We determine the dependence of important parameters for critical fluctuations on temperature and baryon chemical potential in the QCD phase diagram. The analysis is based on an identification of the fluctuations of the order parameter obtained from the Ising model equation of state and the Ginzburg-Landau effective potential approach. The impact of the mapping from Ising model variables to QCD thermodynamics is discussed.
In this talk we present results for the propagators and the phase diagram of QCD, obtained from a truncated set of Dyson-Schwinger equations at finite temperature T and quark chemical potential mu. We include back-coupling effects of the dressed quark and gluon propagators, which also allows us to study the influence of strange quarks. For the phase diagram we find a critical end-point at mu/T = 1.9 and coinciding chiral and deconfinement phase transitions.
We investigate the QCD phase diagram of isospin asymmetric matter using the Polyakov loop extended quark meson (PQM) model with vector interaction. The critical point temperature is found to decrease in isospin asymmetric matter and disappear at large isospin chemical potential. We also discuss the QCD phase transition in the neutron star core. From comparison of the QCD phase diagram in PQM and corresponding baryon and isospin chemical potentials of neutron star matter in relativistic mean field models, we show that the order of the chiral phase transition in the neutron star core could be cr…
In this talk I discuss three recent developments in the theoretical understanding of the phase diagram of the strong interaction. The first topic deals with the comparison of model calculations of the quark-hadron transition at vanishing quark chemical potential with state-of-the-art lattice QCD results. In the second relates to the size of a possible 'quarkyonic phase'. The third deals with the occurence of inhomogeneous chiral phases.
The Polyakov linear sigma model (PLSM) is used to investigate the respective influence of a finite volume and a magnetic field on the quark-hadron phase boundary in the plane of baryon chemical potential ($μ_{B}$) vs. temperature ($T$) of the QCD phase diagram. The calculated results indicate sizable shifts of the quark-hadron phase boundary to lower values of $(μ_{B}~\text{and}~T)$ for increasing magnetic field strength, and an opposite shift to higher values of $(μ_{B}~\text{and}~T)$ for decreasing system volume. Such shifts could have important implications for extraction of the thermodynam…
Based on lattice QCD-adjusted SU(2) nonlocal Polyakov--Nambu--Jona-Lasinio (PNJL) models, we investigate how the location of the critical endpoint in the QCD phase diagram depends on the strenght of the vector meson coupling, as well as the Polyakov-loop (PL) potential and the form factors of the covariant model. The latter are constrained by lattice QCD data for the quark propagator. The strength of the vector coupling is adjusted such as to reproduce the slope of the pseudocritical temperature for the chiral phase transition at low chemical potential extracted recently from lattice QCD simul…
We generalize a previously known class of exact analytic solutions of relativistic perfect fluid hydrodynamics for the first time to arbitrary temperature-dependent Equation of State. We investigate special cases of this class of solutions, in particular, we present hydrodynamical solutions with the Equation of State determined from lattice QCD calculations. We discuss the phenomenological relevance of these solutions as well.
We present a recent development towards a unified description of quark-hadron matter in the QCD phase diagram that is based on a cluster decomposition of the generalized Beth-Uhlenbeck approach to quark matter, selfconsistently coupled to Polyakov-loop and mesonic background fields. The Mott dissociation of hadrons under extreme conditions of temperature and density is triggered by chiral symmetry restoration and confining aspects are modeled by the coupling to the background mean fields. First results for the QCD phase diagram with the capability to describe critical endpoints as well as cros…
We study the QCD phase diagram at finite temperature and baryon chemical potential by relating the behavior of the light-quark condensate to the threshold energy for the onset of perturbative QCD. These parameters are connected to the chiral symmetry restoration and the deconfinement phase transition, respectively. This relation is obtained in the framework of finite energy QCD sum rules at finite temperature and density, with input from Schwinger-Dyson methods to determine the light-quark condensate. Results indicate that both critical temperatures are basically the same within some 3% accura…
QCD phase diagram is obtained by analysing centrality dependence of $J/ψ$ suppression in $\snn$=17.3 Pb+Pb and $\snn$=200 GeV Au+Au collisions. $J/ψ$'s produced in initial interactions are assumed to dissolve if local temperature exceeds a threshold temperature. The threshold temperature depends on the (local) fluid temperature and baryonic chemical potential, which are obtained, under certain assumptions, from experimentally determined quantities e.g. rapidity density, net baryon density. QCD critical line with curvature parameter $κ\approx 0.018-0.23$ is consistent with experimental $J/ψ$ da…
We consider the experimental implications of the axial current triangle diagram anomaly in a hydrodynamic description of high density QCD. We propose a signal of an enhanced production of spin-excited hadrons in the direction of the rotation axis in off-central heavy ion collisions.
We discuss the finite-size effects on the chiral phase transition in QCD. We employ the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model and calculate the thermodynamic potential in the mean-field approximation. Finite-size effects on the thermodynamic potential are taken into account by employing the multiple reflection expansion. The critical temperature is lowered and the order of the phase transition is changed form first to second as the size of the system of interest is reduced.
With the isovector coupling constants adjusted to reproduce the physical pion mass and lattice QCD results in baryon-free quark matter, we have carried out rigourous calculations for the pion condensate in the 3-flavor Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model, and studied the 3-dimensional QCD phase diagram. With the increasing isospin chemical potential $μ_I$, we have observed two nonzero solutions of the pion condensate at finite baryon chemical potentials $μ_B$, representing respectively the pion superfluid phase and the Sarma phase, and their appearance and disappearance correspond to a second-order (firs…
We discuss the phase structure and fluctuations of conserved charges in two flavor QCD. The importance of the density fluctuations to probe the existence of the critical end point is summarized. The role of these fluctuations to identify the first order phase transition in the presence of spinodal phase separation is also discussed.
We compute the longitudinal hydrodynamic flow in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 5500 GeV by using boost non-invariant initial conditions following from perturbative QCD. The transfer of entropy and energy from the central region to larger rapidities caused by boost non-invariance is determined and the associated decrease in the lifetime of the system is estimated.
I report the results of a series of works on the phase diagram of theories with a different number of colors and/or quarks in a different representation than in QCD. Similarities as well as differences as compared to the real world are pointed out, focusing in particular on the interplay of confinement and chiral symmetry breaking. It will be argued that recent lattice data may provide us with a clue to understand deconfinement in cold dense quark matter.
We introduce an event-by-event perturbative-QCD + saturation + hydro ("EKRT") framework for ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions, where we compute the produced fluctuating QCD-matter energy densities from next-to-leading order perturbative QCD using a saturation conjecture to control soft particle production, and describe the space-time evolution of the QCD matter with dissipative fluid dynamics, event by event. We perform a simultaneous comparison of the centrality dependence of hadronic multiplicities, transverse momentum spectra, and flow coefficients of the azimuth-angle asymmetries, aga…
The present knowledge of the QCD phase diagram based on simulations of lattice QCD is summarised. The main questions are whether there is a critical point in the QCD phase diagram and whether it is related to a chiral phase transition. It is shown that QCD at imaginary chemical potentials has a rich phase structure, which can be determined in a controlled way without sign problem and which severely constrains the phase structure at real chemical potentials.
We investigate effects of a fixed nonzero isospin chemical potential on the mu_B-T phase diagram of strongly interacting matter using a Nambu--Jona-Lasinio-type four fermion interaction. We focus on the influence of a flavor-mixing interaction induced by instantons. We find that already for rather moderate values of the coupling strength in the flavor-mixing channel the recent findings of two seperate phase transitions do not persist.
Effects of a flavor singlet vector interaction in the Polyakov - Nambu - Jona-Lasinio (PNJL) model are studied in combination with the axial U(1) breaking Kobayashi - Maskawa - 't Hooft interaction. Using a consistent cutoff scheme we investigate the QCD phase diagram and its dependence on the vector coupling strength $g_v$. We find that the first order chiral phase transition at moderate baryon chemical potentials and its critical point, a generic feature of most NJL-type models without vector coupling, disappear for sufficiently large values of $g_v$ that are consistent with lattice QCD resu…
We investigate the phase structure of massless three-flavor QCD by extending the Nambu-Jona- Lasinio model to include the effects of confinement and the axial anomaly. We study the interplay between the chiral and diquark condensates induced by the axial anomaly, as well as their relationship with the Polyakov loop, which parameterizes confinement. By minimizing the thermodynamic potential we construct the QCD phase diagram and investigate the possibility of realizing a recently discovered low temperature critical point and an associated BEC-BCS crossover. We also perform a Ginzburg-Landau exp…
In this paper we study the chiral phase transition of QCD at finite temperature and density by using the rank-2 confining separable gluon propagator model in the framework of Dyson-Schwinger Equations. The critical end point is located at (T_CEP, μ_CEP) = (69 MeV, 270.3 MeV). It is also found that the first order phase transition might not end at one point, but experiences a two-phase coexisting meta-stable state. A comparison with the results in the previous literature is given.
A summary of discussions on selected topics related to QCD phase diagram, phase transition, critical point, fluctuation and correlations at the Quark Matter 2009 conference are presented.
Neither the chiral limit nor finite baryon density can be simulated directly in lattice QCD, which severely limits our understanding of the QCD phase diagram. In this review I collect results for the phase structure in an extended parameter space of QCD, with varying numbers of flavours, quark masses, colours, lattice spacings, imaginary and isospin chemical potentials. Such studies help in understanding the underlying symmetries and degrees of freedom, and are beginning to provide a consistent picture constraining the possibilities for the physical phase diagram.
In this contribution the role of quantum fluctuations for the QCD phase diagram is discussed. This concerns in particular the importance of the matter back-reaction to the gluonic sector. The impact of these fluctuations on the location of the confinement/deconfinement and the chiral transition lines as well as their interrelation are investigated. Consequences of our findings for the size of a possible quarkyonic phase and location of a critical endpoint in the phase diagram are drawn.
Two parameters that have a strong influence on the finite temperature QCD transition, and play an important role in various physical scenarios are the quark density and the external magnetic field. The effect of these parameters on the thermal properties of QCD is discussed, and an overview of the latest lattice results is given.
We investigate the phase diagram of QCD at small chemical potentials, ie, when chiral and flavour symmetry breaking involves the pairing of a quark and an antiquark. The phase diagram of two-flavour QCD at small chemical potentials involves chiral symmetry restoration and charged pion condensation. We extend previous studies of the topology of the phase diagram, in sections with high degree of symmetry, to the physical case of fully broken flavour symmetry, using generic thermodynamic arguments. We argue that the extension is unique and present the result. In three flavour QCD the phase diagra…
The transition between the hadronic phase and the quark gluon plasma phase at nonzero temperature and quark chemical potentials is studied within the large-Nc expansion of QCD.
We summarize our current understanding of the connection between the QCD phase line and the chemical freeze-out curve as deduced from thermal analyses of yields of particles produced in central collisions between relativistic nuclei.
We draw the three-flavor phase diagram as a function of light- and strange-quark masses for both zero and imaginary quark-number chemical potential, using the Polyakov-loop extended Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model with an effective four-quark vertex depending on the Polyakov loop. The model prediction is qualitatively consistent with 2+1 flavor lattice QCD prediction at zero chemical potential and with degenerate three-flavor lattice QCD prediction at imaginary chemical potential.
We describe the temperature-chemical potential phase diagrams of holographic models of a range of strongly coupled gauge theories that display chiral symmetry breaking/restoration transitions. The models are based on the D3/probe-D7 system but with a phenomenologically chosen running coupling/dilaton profile. We realize chiral phase transitions with either temperature or density that are first or second order by changing the dilaton profile. Although the models are only caricatures of QCD they show that holographic models can capture many aspects of the QCD phase diagram and hint at the depend…
We show that current experimental knowledge of QCD together with general model independent arguments such as continuity, universality and thermodynamic relations, as well as the information gained from various models can be used to constrain the phase diagram of QCD as a function of temperature and baryon chemical potential.
Some consequences of the analyticity of the free energy (pressure) of QCD at finite chemical potential are deduced. These include a method for numerical exploration of the full phase diagram by a novel use of simulations at imaginary chemical potential to extract Yang-Lee zeroes of the grand-canonical partition function. We make use of, and comment on, CPT symmetries, positivity of non-linear susceptibilities and the finiteness of screening lengths. We also comment on the structure of zeroes expected for the usual picture of the phases of QCD, following a discussion of the physics of imaginary…
Quarkyonic matter is a new phase of QCD at finite temperature and density which is distinct from the confined and de-confined phases. Its existence is unambiguously argued in the large number of colors limit in QCD. Hints of its existence for 3 color QCD are shown in lattice Monte-Carlo data and heavy ion experiments.
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.
In the present work we use the modified versions of the MIT bag model, on which both a vector field and a self-interacting term are introduced, to obtain hot quark matter and to investigate the QCD phase diagram. We first analyze two-flavored quark matter constrained to both the freeze-out and the liquid-gas phase transition at the hadronic phase. Later, three-flavored quark matter subject to $β$ equilibrium and charge neutrality is used to compute quark star macroscopic properties, which are confronted with recent observational massive and canonical star radius results. Finally, a comparison …
We demonstrate that the multiplicity distribution of a system located in the vicinity of a first-order phase transition can be successfully measured in terms of its factorial cumulants with a surprisingly small number of events. This finding has direct implications for the experimental search of a QCD phase transition conjectured to be located in the high baryon density region of the QCD phase diagram.
We propose a method to study lattice QCD at non-vanishing temperature (T) and chemical potential (μ). We use n_f=2+1 dynamical staggered quarks with semi-realistic masses on L_t=4 lattices. The critical endpoint (E) of QCD on the Re(μ)-T plane is located. We calculate the pressure (p), the energy density (ε) and the baryon density (n_B) of QCD at non-vanishing T and μ.
We study the chemical potential effects on the chiral phase transition in a simply improved soft-wall AdS/QCD model, which can realize consistently the properties of linear confinement and spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking. The $μ-T$ phase diagrams with both zero and physical quark masses have been obtained from this model. For the case of physical quark mass, the chiral transition has a crossover behavior at low chemical potential. With the increase of the chemical potential $μ$, the critical temperature $T_c$ descends towards zero, and the crossover transition turns into a first-order one…
I review recent new lattice QCD results on a few selected topics which are relevant to the heavy ion physics community. Special emphasis is put on the QCD phase diagram towards the chiral limit and at nonzero baryon density as well as the fate of quarkonia and heavy quark drag coefficients.
We suggest baryon-baryon correlations as an experimentally accessible signature for a first-order phase transition between a baryon-rich phase, like quarkyonic, and a baryon-suppressed hadronic phase in the QCD phase diagram. We examine the consequences of baryon-rich bubble formation in an expanding medium and show how the two-particle correlations vary in the transverse and longitudinal direction depending on the strength of the radial flow, the bubble temperature, and the time when the baryons are emitted.
We study the two-color QCD matter within two fundamental quark flavors via both chiral perturbation theory and Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model methods. The effective Lagrangian described by low lying meson and baryon, i.e., diquark, is derived, where the excitations locate in the extended $\mathrm{SU}(4)$ flavor symmetry space. We determine the leading order terms on the dependence of the baryon and axial isospin densities. Then, the two-color NJL model is employed to run the numerical simulation and the phase diagram in the plane of $μ-ν_{5}$ is plotted.
We discuss the enumeration of Feynman diagrams at tree order for processes with external lines of different types. We show how this can be done by iterating algebraic Schwinger-Dyson equations. Asymptotic estimates for very many external lines are derived. Applications include QED, QCD and scalar QED, and the asymptotic estimates are numerically confronted with the exact results.
In the last years there has been remarkable progress in the comparison of experimental data on the shape of event-by-event distributions of conserved quantities and lattice thermodynamic predictions based on the grand canonical ensemble. In this talk we discuss how the QCD crossover temperature and the freezeout curve are extracted from the analysis of fluctuations. We report that one can also go further and locate the QCD critical point already from published data. We also list the systematics which must be brought under control in future.
We derive exact constraints relating QCD at nonzero baryon chemical potential and temperature to QCD at nonzero isospin chemical potential and temperature, a theory which can be simulated by conventional methods. These results challenge the consistency of dynamical models of superconductivity and superfluidity in QCD.
Recent progress and the latest results on the bulk thermodynamic properties of QCD matter from lattice are reviewed. In particular, I will stress upon the fact that lattice techniques are now entering into precision era where they can provide us with new insights on even the microscopic degrees of freedom in different phases of QCD. I will discuss some instances, from the recent studies of topological fluctuations and screening masses. The progress towards understanding the effects of anomalous $U_A(1)$ symmetry on the chiral crossover transition and transport properties of QCD matter will als…
For the first time, we investigate susceptibilities of dense quark matter up to $8$th order using an effective model. Generally higher order susceptibilities will have more sign changes and larger magnitude, thus should give more information about the presence and location of the conjectured QCD critical end point (CEP). Two cases are studied, one with the CEP and one being crossover phase transition throughout the QCD phase diagram. It is found that a rapid crossover transition can also give similar sign pattern as the case with the CEP and yield large signal. We propose that using several ki…
We study holographic models of the QCD temperature-chemical potential phase diagram based on the D3/D7 system with chiral symmetry breaking. The baryonic phase may be included through linked D5-D7 systems. In a previous analysis of a model with a running gauge coupling a baryonic phase was shown to exist to arbitrarily large chemical potential. Here we explore this phase in a more generic phenomenological setting with a step function dilaton profile. The change in dilaton generates a linear confining $\bar{q}q$ potential and opposes the screening effect of temperature. We show that the persist…
The large Nc limit provides a good phenomenology of meson spectra and interactions. I discuss some problems with applying the large Nc approximation to the description of baryons, and point out a number of apparent paradoxes and phenomenological difficulties.
The physics of the QCD phase diagram is discussed in view from heavy-ion collisions, compact astrophysical phenomena, lattice QCD and chiral effective models. We find that (T,mu_B) region probed in heavy-ion collisions and the black hole formation processes covers most of the critical point locations predicted in recent lattice QCD Monte-Carlo simulations and chiral effective models of QCD. We also discuss the consistency of the statistical model results and dynamical model description.
We present results on the QCD phase diagram for mu_B <= pi T. Our simulations are performed with an imaginary chemical potential mu_I for which the fermion determinant is positive. On an 8^3 x 4 lattice with 2 flavors of staggered quarks, we map out the phase diagram and identify the pseudo-critical temperature T_c(mu_I). For mu_I/T <= pi/3, this is an analytic function, whose Taylor expansion is found to converge rapidly, with truncation errors far smaller than statistical ones. The truncated series may then be continued to real mu, yielding the corresponding phase diagram for mu_B <~ 500 MeV…
The aim of this review is to summarize the contemporary understanding of the QCD phase diagram as a function of temperature and baryo-chemical potential. The focus is on recent theoretical developments due to lattice simulations of the phase diagram.
The phase diagram of lattice QCD in the strong coupling limit can be measured in the full $μ$-$T$ plane, also in the chiral limit. In particular, the phase diagram in the chiral limit features a tricritical point at some $(μ_c,T_c)$. This point may be related to the critical end point expected in the QCD phase diagram. We discuss the gauge corrections to the phase diagram at strong coupling and compare our findings with various possible scenarios in continuum QCD. We comment on the possibility that the tricritical point at strong coupling is connected to the tricritical point in the continuum,…
