Status of Lattice Studies of the QCD Phase Diagram

Abstract

Determining the QCD phase diagram is a pressing task in view of its relevance for nuclear and astro-particle physics programmes. We review the current status of lattice calculations of the phase diagram in the (T,μ_B)-plane for baryon chemical potentials μ_B < 500 MeV. At μ_B=0, simulations of staggered fermion actions predict the quark hadron transition to be a crossover in the continuum limit. As a baryon chemical potential is turned on, there is mounting evidence on coarse lattices for the crossover to weaken, rather than turning into a true phase transition at a critical point, as predicted by earlier simulations.

8 pages, Invited talk at YITP International Symposium on Fundamental Problems in Hot/Dense QCD, Kyoto, Japan, 3-6 Mar 2008

References in corpus (5)

• A QCD chiral critical point at small chemical potential: is it there or not?
• A Random Matrix Study of the QCD Sign Problem
• Effects of the anomaly on the two-flavor QCD chiral phase transition
• The nature of the finite temperature QCD transition as a function of the quark masses
• Lattice QCD at Finite Density

Cited by in corpus (19)

• The phase boundary for the chiral transition in (2+1)-flavor QCD at small values of the chemical potential
• Imaginary Chemical Potential Approach for the Pseudo-Critical Line in the QCD Phase Diagram with Clover-Improved Wilson Fermions
• NJL-type models in the presence of intense magnetic fields: the role of the regularization prescription
• Finite density phase transition of QCD with $N_f=4$ and $N_f=2$ using canonical ensemble method
• Modeling Finite-Volume Effects and Chiral Symmetry Breaking in Two-Flavor QCD Thermodynamics
• Phase conversion in a weakly first-order quark-hadron transition
• First-Order Phase Transition of the Schwinger Model with a Quantum Computer
• O(N) universality and the chiral phase transition in QCD
• Mass and chemical asymmetry in QCD matter
• Anomaly and a QCD-like phase diagram with massive bosonic baryons
• Exploring the different phase diagrams of Strong Interactions
• Towards extremely dense matter on the lattice
• Emergence of soft quark excitations by the coupling with a soft mode of the QCD critical point
• Model analysis of thermal UV-cutoff effects on the chiral critical surface at finite temperature and chemical potential
• Particle asymmetries in the early universe
• Unified Functional-Holographic Theory of the QCD Critical End Point
• On Some Features of Color Confinement
• 't Hooft tensor for generic gauge group
• Symmetry, Confinement and the phase diagram of QCD