Chiral Transition and Baryon-number Susceptibility

Abstract

We discuss the baryon-number susceptibility ${\chi }_B$ and related topics which include the density fluctuations around the critical point of the chiral transition at finite temperature $T$ and baryon density ${\rho }_B$. Phenomenological implications of the density fluctuations near the first-order chiral transition at finite density are also discussed.

Talk presented at International Symposium on ``Quantum Chromodynamics and Color Confinement'' (Confinement 2000), held at RCNP, Osaka University, March 7 - 10, 2000. To be published in the proceedings ed. by H. Suganuma, M. Fukushima and H. Toki. 9 pages. No figures