QCD Crossover at Low Temperatures from Lee-Yang Edge Singularity
Abstract
We provide the first lattice-QCD estimate of the crossover line down to ~MeV. We introduce a new method that combines the Lee-Yang edge in the complex plane of baryon chemical potential with universal chiral scaling to determine the dependence of the QCD chiral critical and pseudo-critical temperatures. By performing -flavor lattice QCD simulations at ~MeV and purely imaginary with a single lattice spacing and two volumes, we compute -dependent baryon-number susceptibilities and extract the location of the Lee-Yang edge. Together with universal scaling near the QCD chiral transition, it constrains the mapping function between and the scaling variable (\textit{i.e.}\ the argument of the universal scaling functions). This mapping function then yields the dependence of the critical and pseudo-critical temperatures for ~MeV. While our calculation is performed only at a single value of low temperature without explicit input from small- expansion, the resulting dependence of the pseudo-critical temperature is consistent with established lattice-QCD determinations at small and compatible with chemical freeze-out parameters of heavy-ion collisions down to low temperatures, demonstrating the validity and robustness of the method. Application of this method can be systematically extended to additional temperatures and finer discretizations, opening a pathway to charting the QCD phase diagram in the low-, high- regime.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2601.04782,
title = {QCD Crossover at Low Temperatures from Lee-Yang Edge Singularity},
author = {D. A. Clarke and H. -T. Ding and J. -B. Gu and S. -T. Li and Swagato Mukherjee and P. Petreczky and C. Schmidt and H. -T. Shu and K. -F. Ye},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.04782},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
This paper has been withdrawn by the authors because we identified an issue in the analysis related to the extraction of the Lee--Yang edge, which in turn affects the robustness of the main conclusions on the phase boundary. While the lattice data presented in the paper remain valid, the results concerning the Lee--Yang edge and the phase boundary should not be used in their present form