Towards the chiral critical surface of QCD

Abstract

The critical endpoint of the QCD phase diagram is usually expected to belong to the chiral critical surface, i.e. the surface of second order transitions bounding the region of first order chiral phase transitions for small quark masses in the {m_{u,d}, m_s,μ} parameter space. For μ=0, QCD with physical quark masses is known to be an analytic crossover, requiring the region of chiral transitions to expand with μfor a critical endpoint to exist. Instead, on coarse N_t=4 lattices, we find the area of chiral transitions to shrink with μ, which excludes a chiral critical point for QCD at moderate chemical potentials μ_B < 500 MeV. First results on finer N_t=6 lattices indicate a curvature of the critical surface consistent with zero and unchanged conclusions.

4 pages, 3 figures, version to appear in proceedings for Quark Matter 2009, March 30-April 4, Knoxville, Tennessee

References in corpus (6)

• The chiral critical point of Nf=3 QCD at finite density to the order (mu/T)^4
• Lattice QCD at finite temperature and density
• A QCD chiral critical point at small chemical potential: is it there or not?
• Lattice QCD at finite temperature and density in the phase-quenched approximation
• The nature of the finite temperature QCD transition as a function of the quark masses
• Lattice QCD at Finite Density

Cited by in corpus (6)

• QCD Phase Diagram: Phase Transition, Critical Point and Fluctuations
• QCD phase diagram from finite energy sum rules
• Search for the QCD Critical Point in High Energy Nuclear Collisions
• Strange mass dependence of the tricritical point in the U(3)_L x U(3)_R chiral sigma model
• QCD at nonzero temperature and density
• Exploring the QCD phase diagram through relativistic heavy ion collisions