End Point of a First-Order Phase Transition in Many-Flavor Lattice QCD at Finite Temperature and Density

TL;DR

This study explores the phase transition behavior in many-flavor lattice QCD at finite temperature and density, identifying conditions for first order transitions relevant to electroweak baryogenesis.

Contribution

It determines the critical heavy flavor mass for first order transitions and examines how this critical point shifts with flavor number and chemical potential.

Findings

Critical heavy flavor mass increases with Nf.

First order region widens with higher chemical potential.

Potential implications for (2+1)-flavor QCD applications.

Abstract

Towards the feasibility study of the electroweak baryogenesis in realistic technicolor scenario, we investigate the phase structure of (2+Nf)-flavor QCD, where the mass of two flavors is fixed to a small value and the others are heavy. For the baryogenesis, an appearance of a first order phase transition at finite temperature is a necessary condition. Using a set of configurations of two-flavor lattice QCD and applying the reweighting method, the effective potential defined by the probability distribution function of the plaquette is calculated in the presence of additional many heavy flavors. Through the shape of the effective potential, we determine the critical mass of heavy flavors separating the first order and crossover regions and find it to become larger with Nf. We moreover study the critical line at finite density and the first order region is found to become wider as increasing the chemical potential. Possible applications to real (2+1)-flavor QCD are discussed.