The critical line of two-flavor QCD at finite isospin or baryon densities from imaginary chemical potentials

TL;DR

This study uses imaginary chemical potentials to accurately determine the critical lines of two-flavor QCD at finite isospin and baryon densities, revealing deviations from quadratic behavior and the potential for transition strengthening.

Contribution

It introduces a method to analytically continue from imaginary to real chemical potentials, providing new insights into the phase structure of QCD with two flavors.

Findings

Deviations from quadratic dependence in pseudocritical lines are observed.

Imaginary isospin chemical potential can strengthen the transition.

Quantified differences between finite quark and isospin chemical potential effects.

Abstract

We determine the (pseudo)critical lines of QCD with two degenerate staggered fermions at nonzero temperature and quark or isospin density, in the region of imaginary chemical potentials; analytic continuation is then used to prolongate to the region of real chemical potentials. We obtain an accurate determination of the curvatures at zero chemical potential, quantifying the deviation between the case of finite quark and of finite isospin chemical potential. Deviations from a quadratic dependence of the pseudocritical lines on the chemical potential are clearly seen in both cases: we try different extrapolations and, for the case of nonzero isospin chemical potential, confront them with the results of direct Monte Carlo simulations. Finally we find that, as for the finite quark density case, an imaginary isospin chemical potential can strengthen the transition till turning it into strong first order.