Curvature of the pseudocritical line in (2+1)-flavor QCD with HISQ fermions

TL;DR

This study investigates the curvature of the pseudocritical line in (2+1)-flavor QCD with HISQ fermions at finite temperature and imaginary chemical potential, using lattice simulations to approach the continuum limit.

Contribution

It provides a continuum extrapolation of the pseudocritical line curvature in (2+1)-flavor QCD with HISQ fermions at nonzero temperature and chemical potential.

Findings

Determined the curvature of the pseudocritical line.

Performed simulations on lattices up to 48^3 x 12.

Checked for finite cutoff effects.

Abstract

We study QCD with (2+1)-HISQ fermions at nonzero temperature and nonzero imaginary baryon chemical potential. Monte Carlo simulations are performed using the MILC code along the line of constant physics with a light to strange mass ratio of $m_l/m_s=1/20$ on lattices up to $48^3 \times 12$ to check for finite cutoff effects. We determine the curvature of the pseudocritical line extrapolated to the continuum limit.