Related papers: The QCD Phase Diagram: Expectations and Challenges

The chiral critical surface is a surface of second order phase transitions bounding the region of first order chiral phase transitions for small quark masses in the {m_{u,d}, m_s,\mu} parameter space. The potential critical endpoint of the…

Temperature and baryon, charge, and strangeness chemical potentials characterize QCD matter under extreme conditions. Differences between these chemical potentials and their ratios probe conserved-charge correlations and the system's…

In nucleus-nucleus collisions at ultra-relativistic energies matter is formed with initial energy density significantly exceeding the critical energy density for the transition from hadronic to partonic matter. We will review the…

Currently at the Beam Energy Scan at RHIC experimental efforts are being made to find the QCD critical point. On the theoretical side, the behavior of higher-order susceptibilities of the net-baryon charge from Lattice QCD at…

For the exploration of the phase diagram of QCD, effective Polyakov loop theories derived from lattice QCD provide a valuable tool in the heavy quark mass regime. Using mean field approximations these theories are evaluated in the high and…

A systematic search for a critical point in the phase diagram of QCD matter is underway at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and is planned at several future facilities. Its existence, if confirmed, and its location will greatly…

We investigate the chemical potential and baryon number density of the hadron-quark phase transition in neutron star matter. The hadron matter is described with relativistic mean field theory, and the quark matter is described with the…

I review the physics of the phase boundary between hadronic matter and quark matter from several different points of view. These include thermodynamics, statistical physics, and chemical kinetics. In particular, the review focuses on the…

The Helmholtz free energy density is parametrized as a function of temperature and baryon density near the chiral critical point of QCD. The parametrization incorporates the expected critical exponents and amplitudes. An expansion away from…

QCD with three degenerate quark flavours at zero baryon density exhibits a first order thermal phase transition for small quark masses, which changes to a smooth crossover for some critical quark mass m^c_0, i.e. the chiral critical point.…

We present results for fluctuations of the baryon number for QCD at nonzero temperature and chemical potential. These are extracted from solutions to a coupled set of truncated Dyson-Schwinger equations for the quark and gluon propagators…

We propose a method to probe the nature of phase transitions in lattice QCD at finite temperature and density, which is based on the investigation of an effective potential as a function of the average plaquette. We analyze data obtained in…

We study the QCD phase diagram, in particular we study the critical points of the two main QCD phase transitions, confinement and chiral symmetry breaking. Confinement drives chiral symmetry breaking, and, due to the finite quark mass, at…

The location of the critical end point (CEP) in the QCD phase diagram is determined under different scenarios. The effect of strangeness, isospin/charge asymmetry and an external magnetic field is investigated. The discussion is performed…

We report on recent progress concerning theoretical description of event-by-event fluctuations in heavy-ion collisions. Specifically we discuss a new Cooper-Frye particlization routine -- the subensemble sampler -- which is designed to…

We summarize recent results on the volume dependence of the location of the critical endpoint in the QCD phase diagram. To this end, we employ a sophisticated combination of Lattice Yang--Mills theory and a (truncated) version of…

Recent experimental and theoretical developments have motivated interest in a more detailed exploration of heavy ion collisions in the range sqrt(sNN)=5-15 GeV. In contrast to interactions at the full RHIC energy of sqrt(sNN)=200 GeV, such…

The appearance of a new phase of QCD, Quarkyonic Matter in the limit of large number of colors is studied within Nambu-Jona-Lassinio effective chiral model coupled to the Polyakov loop. The interplay of this novel QCD phase with chiral…

We will provide a review of some of the physics which can be addressed by studying fluctuations and correlations in heavy ion collisions. We will discuss Lattice QCD results on fluctuations and correlations and will put them into context…

I retrace the developments from Hagedorn's concept of a limiting temperature for hadronic matter to the discovery and characterization of the quark-gluon plasma as a new state of matter. My recollections begin with the transformation more…