Superstatistics and the effective QCD phase diagram

TL;DR

This paper investigates how partial thermalization influences the QCD phase diagram, particularly the location of the critical end point, with implications for relativistic heavy ion collision experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a model incorporating partial thermalization effects to study shifts in the critical end point of the QCD phase diagram.

Findings

Critical end point shifts to higher temperatures and lower chemical potentials due to partial thermalization.

Partial thermalization effects are significant for interpreting heavy ion collision experiments.

The model links subsystem thermalization to the number of participants in collisions.

Abstract

We study the effect of a partially thermalized scenario for chiral symmetry restoration at finite temperature and quark chemical potential, and in particular for the position of the critical end point in an effective description of the QCD phase diagram. We show that these effects produce the critical end point to be displaced towards larger values of temperature and lower values of the quark chemical potential as compared to the case when the system can be regarded as completely thermalized. We conclude that these effects may be important for relativistic heavy ion collisions where the number of subsystems making the whole interaction volume can be linked to the finite number of participants in the reaction.