Related papers: QCD Critical Points and Their Associated Soft Mode…

We discuss the QCD critical point at finite density through the study of many flavor QCD, in which two light flavors and Nf massive flavors exist. Performing simulations of QCD with two flavors of improved Wilson fermions, we calculate…

Heavy-ion collisions at relativistic energies probe matter at extreme conditions of temperatures and energy densities. The study of event-by-event fluctuations of experimental observables is crucial to probe the QCD phase transition, locate…

At high temperatures or densities, hadronic matter shows different forms of critical behaviour: colour deconfinement, chiral symmetry restoration, and diquark condensation. I first discuss the conceptual basis of these phenomena and then…

I review arguments for the existence of a critical point in the QCD phase diagram as a function of temperature and baryon chemical potential. I describe how heavy ion collision experiments at the SPS and RHIC can discover the tell-tale…

Because too many interesting things are going on now, I have tried to squeeze three different subjects into one talk. The first is a brief summary of the color super-conductivity. During the last year we learned that instanton-induced…

Net-proton number fluctuations can be measured experimentally and hence provide a source of important information about the matter created during relativistic heavy ion collisions. Particularly, they may give us clues about the conjectured…

The evolution of a heavy ion collision passes close to the O(4) critical point of QCD, where fluctuations of the order parameter are expected to be enhanced. Using the appropriate stochastic hydrodynamic equations in mean field near the the…

We investigate the soft mode at the QCD critical point (CP) on the basis of the functional renormalization group. We calculate the spectral functions in the meson channels in the two-flavor quark--meson model. Our result shows that the…

We discuss the phase structure and fluctuations of conserved charges in two flavor QCD. The importance of the density fluctuations to probe the existence of the critical end point is summarized. The role of these fluctuations to identify…

Several approaches to QCD with two massless quarks at finite temperature T and baryon chemical potential mu suggest the existence of a tricritical point on the boundary of the phase with spontaneously broken chiral symmetry. In QCD with…

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…

We make an intensive investigation of the soft mode at the quantum chromodynamics (QCD) critical point on the basis of the functional renormalization group (FRG) method in the local potential approximation. We calculate the spectral…

In these lectures we provide an introduction to the theory of QCD at very high baryon density. We begin with a review of some aspects of quantum many-body system that are relevant in the QCD context. We also provide a brief review of QCD…

We study the QCD phase diagram at finite temperature and baryon chemical potential by relating the behavior of the light-quark condensate to the threshold energy for the onset of perturbative QCD. These parameters are connected to the…

Thermal fluctuations of the color superconducting order parameter in dense quark matter are investigated in terms of the phenomenological Ginzburg - Landau approach. Our estimates show that fluctuations of the di-quark gap may strongly…

We investigate the interplay between the (light-light quark) chiral condensate and heavy-light quark condensate induced by the QCD Kondo effect, which is described by an effective Lagrangian with four-point interactions and the mean-field…

Fluctuations of the color superconducting order parameter in dense quark matter at finite temperatures are investigated in terms of the phenomenological Ginzburg - Landau approach. Our estimates show that fluctuations of the di-quark gap…

The talk is an introduction into diquark condensation phenomena which occur in QCD at high energy density. They are driven by instantons and instanton-antiinstanton pairs (or ``molecules''), which generate attraction in some qq channels. A…

We consider a low $T_c$ metallic superconductor weakly coupled to the soft fluctuations associated with proximity to a nematic quantum critical point (NQCP). We show that: 1) a BCS-Eliashberg treatment remains valid outside of a…

We discuss the phase structure of QCD for $N_f=2$ and $N_f=2+1$ dynamical quark flavours at finite temperature and baryon chemical potential. It emerges dynamically from the underlying fundamental interactions between quarks and gluons in…