The Baryonic Phase in Holographic Descriptions of the QCD Phase Diagram

TL;DR

This paper investigates the baryonic phase in holographic QCD models, demonstrating how a step function dilaton profile influences its existence and the resulting phase diagram, linking confinement to baryonic matter stability.

Contribution

It introduces a phenomenological holographic model with a step function dilaton to study the baryonic phase and its dependence on confinement features in the QCD phase diagram.

Findings

Baryonic phase persists depending on the dilaton step size.

QCD-like phase diagrams can be achieved in this holographic setup.

The existence of the baryonic phase is linked to confinement in Wilson loop calculations.

Abstract

We study holographic models of the QCD temperature-chemical potential phase diagram based on the D3/D7 system with chiral symmetry breaking. The baryonic phase may be included through linked D5-D7 systems. In a previous analysis of a model with a running gauge coupling a baryonic phase was shown to exist to arbitrarily large chemical potential. Here we explore this phase in a more generic phenomenological setting with a step function dilaton profile. The change in dilaton generates a linear confining $\bar{q}q$ potential and opposes the screening effect of temperature. We show that the persistence of the baryonic phase depends on the step size and that QCD-like phase diagrams can be described. The baryonic phase's existence is qualitatively linked to the existence of confinement in Wilson loop computations in the background.