Curvature of the QCD critical line with 2+1 HISQ fermions

TL;DR

This study investigates the curvature of the QCD critical line at nonzero temperature and density using lattice simulations with 2+1 HISQ fermions, employing analytic continuation from imaginary chemical potentials.

Contribution

It provides new lattice QCD results on the critical line curvature using improved staggered fermions and analytic continuation methods.

Findings

Determined the curvature of the QCD critical line.

Used analytic continuation from imaginary chemical potentials.

Performed simulations with 2+1 HISQ fermions.

Abstract

We present results on the curvature of the critical line of QCD with 2+1 HISQ fermions at nonzero temperature and quark density obtained by analytic continuation from imaginary chemical potentials. Monte Carlo simulations are performed by means of the MILC code, suitably modified to include a nonzero imaginary baryon chemical potential. We set the chemical potential at the same value for the three quark species and work on the line of constant physics with a light to strange mass ratio of 1/20 as determined in Ref.~\cite{Bazavov:2011nk}.