Strangeness Neutrality and QCD Thermodynamics

TL;DR

This paper examines how enforcing strangeness neutrality influences the phase structure and thermodynamics of QCD at finite baryon and strangeness chemical potentials, using a Polyakov loop enhanced quark-meson model with functional renormalization group methods.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of strangeness neutrality effects on QCD thermodynamics within a non-perturbative effective theory framework.

Findings

Strangeness neutrality significantly affects thermodynamic quantities.

The equation of state is notably altered by strangeness neutrality.

Non-perturbative fluctuations are crucial for accurate results.

Abstract

Since the incident nuclei in heavy-ion collisions do not carry strangeness, the global net strangeness of the detected hadrons has to vanish. We investigate the impact of strangeness neutrality on the phase structure and thermodynamics of QCD at finite baryon and strangeness chemical potential. To this end, we study the low-energy sector of QCD within a Polyakov loop enhanced quark-meson effective theory with 2+1 dynamical quark flavors. Non-perturbative quantum, thermal, and density fluctuations are taken into account with the functional renormalization group. We show that the impact of strangeness neutrality on thermodynamic quantities such as the equation of state is sizable.