Related papers: Constraints on possible phase transitions above th…
In this talk I discuss three recent developments in the theoretical understanding of the phase diagram of the strong interaction. The first topic deals with the comparison of model calculations of the quark-hadron transition at vanishing…
In this paper we discuss the QCD phase-transitions in the nontopological soliton model of quark confinement and explore possible astrophysical consequences. Our key idea is to look at quark stars (which are believed to exist since the quark…
There is little doubt that Quantumchromodynamics (QCD) is the theory which describes strong interaction physics. Lattice gauge simulations of QCD predict that in the $\mu,T$ plane there is a line where a transition from confined hadronic…
We study the relation of confinement and chiral symmetry breaking in gauge theories with non-trivial center, such as SU(N) gauge theories. To this end, we deform these gauge theories by introducing an additional control parameter into the…
Recent observations of neutron stars, combined with causality, thermodynamic stability, and nuclear constraints, indicate a rapid stiffening of QCD matter at densities slightly above nuclear saturation density ($n_0 \simeq 0.16\,{\rm…
The deconfinement and chiral phase transitions are studied in the context of the electrized quark matter at finite temperature in the two-flavor Polyakov-Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model. Using the mean field approximation and an electric field…
A phase of strong interacting matter with deconfined quarks is expected in the core of massive neutron stars. In this article, we perform a study of the hadron-quark phase transition in cold (T = 0) neutron star matter and we calculate…
We point out a new configuration in the Witten-Sakai-Sugimoto model, allowing baryons in the pointlike approximation to coexist with fundamental quarks. The resulting phase is a holographic realization of quarkyonic matter, which is…
In the standard model of particle physics, the strong force is characterized by the theory of quantum chromodynamics (QCD). It is commonly understood from QCD properties that hadrons, at sufficiently high temperatures or densities, melt…
We analyze the phases of the Sakai-Sugimoto model at finite temperature and baryon chemical potential. Baryonic matter is represented either by 4-branes in the 8-branes or by strings stretched from the 8-branes to the horizon. We find the…
First, the chiral phase transition at nonzero temperature and baryon chemical potential is studied at mean field level in the sigma model that includes quark degrees of freedom explicitly. For small bare quark masses the critical point…
In this contribution I summarize and discuss the results of the bulk thermodynamic characteristics, meson and nucleon structure in hot matter obtained in the framework of a chiral quark-meson theory. A hybrid NJL model is used in which a…
The recent discussions by Koci\'c and Kogut on the nature of the chiral phase transition are reviewed. The mean-field nature of the transition suggested by these authors is supported in random matrix theory by Verbaarschot and Jackson which…
A new phase of dense QCD proposed in the limit of large number of colors, Quarkyonic Phase, is discussed in chiral approaches. The interplay between chiral symmetry breaking and confinement together with the $N_c$ dependence of the phase…
Large-N_c QCD matter at intermediate baryon density and low temperatures has been conjectured to be in the so-called quarkyonic phase, i.e., to have a quark Fermi surface and on top of it a confined spectrum of excitations. It has been…
As the interior density of a neutron star can become very high, it has been expected and discussed that quark matter may exist inside it. To describe the transition from hadron to quark phases (and vice versa), there are mainly two methods;…
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…
In this work, we investigate the properties of hadronic and quark matter that would allow for a first order phase transition between them within neutron stars. To this end, we use a parameterizable Relativistic Mean-Field (RMF) description…
We investigate the influence of a deconfinement phase transition on the dynamics of hot and dense nuclear matter. We apply a hybrid model where an intermediate hydrodynamics stage is employed for the the hot and dense stage of a system…
Using combined strong coupling and hopping parameter expansions, we derive an effective three-dimensional theory from thermal lattice QCD with heavy Wilson quarks. The theory depends on traced Polyakov loops only and correctly reflects the…