Related papers: QCD critical region and higher moments for three f…
Fluctuations in the vicinity of a phase transition are important but neglected in mean-field theory. In order to assess the influence of such fluctuations on the critical endpoint and the size of the critical region in the QCD phase…
We study the qualitative features of the QCD phase diagram in the context of the linear quark-meson model with two flavours, using the exact renormalization group. We identify the universality classes of the second-order phase transitions…
Some recent theoretical developments of the QCD phase diagram are summarized. Chiral symmetry restoration and the confinement/deconfinement transition at nonzero temperature and quark densities are analyzed in the framework of an effective…
Based on the proper-time renormalization group approach, the scalar and the quark number susceptibilities in the vicinity of possible critical end points of the hadronic phase diagram are investigated in the two-flavor quark-meson model.…
We analyze the many-flavor phase diagram of quantum electrodynamics (QED) in 2+1 (Euclidean) space-time dimensions. We compute the critical flavor number above which the theory is in the quasi-conformal massless phase. For this, we study…
A survey is given of recent QCD theory advances concerning the phase diagram, in particular the indications for a critical point and adjacent first order phase transition at high baryo-chemical potential, and the new ideas concerning a…
We employ the linear sigma model to study the chiral dynamics of two flavors of quarks at finite temperature and density. Our calculations include thermal fluctuations of both the bosonic and fermionic fields. In particular, we determine…
The mass sensitivity of the chiral phase transition of QCD with and without axial $U_A(1)$-symmetry breaking at vanishing and finite quark chemical potential is investigated. To focus on the low-energy sector of QCD, a quark-meson model…
We will report recent progress on the QCD phase diagram at finite temperature and density. In particular, we discuss the universal scaling of the chiral transition in the limit of two massless quarks and one strange quark. We also discuss…
We investigate the phase transitions of (2+Nf)-flavor QCD, where two light flavors and Nf massive flavors exist, aiming to understand the phase structure of (2+1)-flavor QCD. Performing simulations of 2-flavor QCD with improved staggered…
The relevance of higher order cumulants of conserved charges for the analysis of freeze-out and critical conditions in heavy ion collisions at LHC and RHIC is discussed. Using properties of $O(4)$ scaling functions, the generic structure of…
We investigate a nonlocal chiral quark model with separable 4-fermion interaction for the case of U(3) flavor symmetry and show that strange quark matter is unlikely to occur in a large enough volume of a compact star to entail remarkable…
We use the linear sigma model with two flavors of quarks to study the phase diagram at finite temperature and baryon chemical potential as a function of the vacuum pion mass. Our calculations include thermal fluctuations of both the bosonic…
The nature of the QCD chiral phase transition in the limit of vanishing quark masses has remained elusive for a long time, since it cannot be simulated directly on the lattice and is strongly cutoff-dependent. We report on a comprehensive…
The phase diagram of QCD is investigated by varying number of colors $N_c$ within a Polyakov loop quark-meson chiral model. In particular, our attention is focused on the critical point(s): the critical point present for $N_c=3$ moves…
We study effective models of chiral fields and Polyakov loop expected to describe the dynamics responsible for the phase structure of two-flavor QCD at finite temperature and density. We consider chiral sector described either using linear…
Within the proper-time renormalization group approach, the chiral phase diagram of a two-flavor quark-meson model is studied. In the chiral limit, the location of the tricritical point which is linked to a Gaussian fixed point, is…
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…
I first sketch recent developments concerning the phase diagram of strongly interacting matter as a function of temperature and baryon density, obtained using a model for two-flavor QCD in which the interaction between quarks is modelled on…
We investigate the phase diagram of the so-called Polyakov--Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model at finite temperature and non-zero chemical potential with three quark flavors. Chiral and deconfinement phase transitions are discussed and the relevant…