Related papers: Fluctuation-induced modifications of the phase str…
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…
The interplay of mesonic fluctuations with an axial $U(1)_A$-symmetry breaking and resulting effects on the location of a possibly existing critical endpoint in the QCD phase diagram are investigated in a framework of the functional…
We study a $U(N)\times U(N)$ symmetric scalar field model in four and three dimensions. First, using our data in four dimensions in the weak coupling region, we demonstrate explicitly that the observed first order phase transition is…
The role of the axial anomaly in the chiral phase transition at finite temperature and quark chemical potential is investigated within a non-perturbative functional renormalization group approach. The flow equation for the grand potential…
We discuss the phase structure and thermodynamics of QCD by means of dynamical chiral effective models. Quark and meson fluctuations are included via the functional renormalization group. We study the influence of confinement in addition to…
We study the chiral phase transition with 2 + 1 quark flavors in an improved soft-wall AdS/QCD model, which can produce the light meson spectrum and many other low-energy quantities consistent with experiments in the two-flavor case. The…
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 consider the Polyakov loop-extended two flavor chiral quark--meson model and discuss critical phenomena related with the spontaneous breaking of the chiral symmetry. The model is explored beyond the mean-field approximation in the…
We consider the $(2+1)$ flavor Polyakov Quark Meson Model and study the effect of including fermion vacuum fluctuations on the thermodynamics and phase diagram. The resulting model predictions are compared to the recent QCD lattice…
We present recent results on the critical and pseudo-critical temperatures in (2+1)-flavor QCD with a physical strange quark mass and two degenerate light quark masses extrapolated to the chiral limit and tuned to the physical value,…
We study the effect of quantum and thermal fluctuations as well as the mass dependence of the phase structure of QCD at finite temperature and density within a dynamical Polyakov-loop--extended quark-meson model. The glue dynamics is…
We are computing the modifications for the scalar and pseudoscalar meson masses and mixing angles due to the proper accounting of fermionic vacuum fluctuation in the framework of the generalized 2+1 flavor quark meson model and the Polyakov…
We study the thermodynamic curvature, $R$, around the chiral phase transition at finite temperature and chemical potential, within the quark-meson model augmented with meson fluctuations. We study the effect of the fluctuations, pions and…
We revisit the phase diagram of strong-interaction matter for the two-flavor quark-meson model using the Functional Renormalization Group. In contrast to standard mean-field calculations, an unusual phase structure is encountered at low…
The phase structure of baryonic matter is investigated with focus on the role of fluctuations beyond the mean-field approximation. The prototype test case studied is the chiral nucleon-meson model, with added comments on the chiral…
A comprehensive study of the phase structure of the two-flavor quark-meson-diquark model is presented within the nonperturbative functional renormalization group framework. The influence of mesonic fluctuations beyond the mean-field…
We study the impact of higher order quark-meson scattering processes on the chiral phase structure of two-flavour QCD at finite temperature and quark density. Thermal, density and quantum fluctuations are included within a functional…
Phase transition in U(n)xU(n) models is investigated for arbitrary flavor number n. We present a nonperturbative, 3+1 dimensional finite temperature treatment of obtaining the effective potential, based on a chiral invariant expansion of…
Recent results for the QCD phase structure at finite temperature and light-quark chemical potential are summarized, where the cases of N_f = 2 + 1 and N_f = 2+1+1 dynamical quark flavors are considered. Order parameters for the chiral and…
The properties of net quark number fluctuations in the vicinity of the QCD chiral phase transition are discussed in terms of an effective chiral model in the mean-field approximation. We focus on the ratio of the fourth- to second- order…