Critical Points in the QCD Phase Diagram with Two Flavors of Quarks

TL;DR

This paper uses the linear sigma model to explore the phase diagram of two-flavor QCD, revealing how the number of critical points varies with pion mass at finite temperature and density.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of the QCD phase diagram considering thermal fluctuations and pion mass dependence, highlighting the conditions for multiple critical points.

Findings

Phase diagram varies with pion mass

Number of critical points can be zero, one, or two

Thermal fluctuations significantly influence phase structure

Abstract

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 phase diagram in the plane of temperature and baryon chemical potential as a function of the pion mass. An interesting phase structure occurs that results in zero, one, or two critical points depending on the value of the vacuum pion mass.