Holography, Heavy-Quark Free Energy, and the QCD Phase Diagram

TL;DR

This paper employs gauge/string duality to study the free energy of static quark pairs in strongly interacting matter, revealing a phase diagram consistent with lattice QCD and effective models.

Contribution

It introduces a holographic model incorporating a charged black hole and dilaton field to analyze the QCD phase diagram at finite temperature and chemical potential.

Findings

Phase diagram aligns well with lattice QCD results.

Holographic approach captures confinement and deconfinement transitions.

Model provides insights into heavy-quark free energy in QCD-like theories.

Abstract

We use gauge/string duality to investigate the free energy of two static color sources (a heavy quark-antiquark pair) in a Yang-Mills theory in strongly interacting matter, varying temperature and chemical potential. The dual space geometry is Anti-de Sitter with a charged black-hole to describe finite temperature and density in the boundary theory, and we also include a background dilaton field to generate confinement. The resulting phase diagram in the chemical potential-temperature $\mu-T$ plane is in a quite good agreement with lattice results and effective models of QCD.