Chiral and deconfinement transitions in strong coupling lattice QCD

TL;DR

This paper explores the QCD phase diagram using strong coupling lattice QCD, deriving an effective potential that captures both chiral and deconfinement transitions at finite temperature and chemical potential.

Contribution

It analytically derives an effective potential including both chiral and Z_3 deconfinement dynamics with finite coupling effects in mean-field approximation.

Findings

Polyakov loop shows rapid variations at fixed large chemical potential as temperature increases.

Identifies sequential chiral-induced and Z_3-induced deconfinement crossovers.

Provides insights into the relation between chiral and deconfinement transitions in the QCD phase diagram.

Abstract

We investigate the QCD phase diagram based on the strong coupling expansion of the lattice QCD with one species of the staggered fermions at finite temperature (T) and chemical potential (mu). We analytically derive an effective potential including both chiral and deconfinement (Z_3) dynamics with finite coupling effects in mean-field approximations. We focus on Polyakov loop properties in whole T-mu plane, and study relations between the chiral and deconfinement crossovers. At a fixed large mu, sequencial rapid variations of the Polyakov loop are observed with increasing T. It is natural to interprete them as the "chiral induced" and "Z_3 induced" deconfinement crossovers.