English

Thermodynamics of a three-flavor nonlocal Polyakov--Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2010-06-15 v2

Abstract

The present work generalizes a nonlocal version of the Polyakov loop-extended Nambu and Jona-Lasinio (PNJL) model to the case of three active quark flavors, with inclusion of the axial U(1) anomaly. Gluon dynamics is incorporated through a gluonic background field, expressed in terms of the Polyakov loop. The thermodynamics of the nonlocal PNJL model accounts for both chiral and deconfinement transitions. Our results obtained in mean-field approximation are compared to lattice QCD results for Nf=2+1N_\text{f}=2+1 quark flavors. Additional pionic and kaonic contributions to the pressure are calculated in random phase approximation. Finally, this nonlocal 3-flavor PNJL model is applied to the finite density region of the QCD phase diagram. It is confirmed that the existence and location of a critical point in this phase diagram depends sensitively on the strength of the axial U(1) breaking interaction.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0911.3510,
  title  = {Thermodynamics of a three-flavor nonlocal Polyakov--Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model},
  author = {T. Hell and S. Rößner and M. Cristoforetti and W. Weise},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0911.3510},
  year   = {2010}
}

Comments

31 pages, 15 figures, minor changes compared to v1