Effective models of two-flavor QCD: finite $\mu$ and $m_q$-dependence

TL;DR

This paper investigates effective models of two-flavor QCD to understand how finite temperature, density, and quark mass influence its phase structure, including the critical point and potential quarkyonic phase emergence.

Contribution

It compares linear sigma and Nambu-Jona-Lasinio models to analyze the QCD phase diagram and the effects of explicit chiral symmetry breaking.

Findings

Critical point location varies with quark mass

Possible emergence of quarkyonic phase

Phase diagram insights for two-flavor QCD

Abstract

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 sigma model or Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model and study the phase diagram and determine the location of the critical point as a function of the explicit chiral symmetry breaking (i.e. the bare quark mass $m_q$). We also discuss the possible emergence of the quarkyonic phase in this model.