Mesonic correlators at non-zero baryon chemical potential

TL;DR

This paper investigates how mesonic correlation functions in thermal QCD change at finite baryon chemical potential using lattice simulations, revealing sensitivity to density and indications of the chiral crossover.

Contribution

It introduces a lattice QCD study of mesonic correlators at finite chemical potential using Taylor expansion, providing new insights into chiral crossover behavior.

Findings

Mesonic correlators are sensitive to finite-density effects.

Second-order Taylor terms indicate the chiral crossover.

Results are obtained using anisotropic fixed-scale lattices with Wilson fermions.

Abstract

In order to study the fate of mesons in thermal QCD at finite baryon chemical potential, we consider light mesonic correlation functions using the Taylor expansion to ${\cal O}((\mu/T)^2)$, in both the hadronic and quark-gluon plasma phases. We use the FASTSUM anisotropic fixed-scale lattices with $N_f = 2+1$ flavours of Wilson fermion. We find that mesonic correlators are sensitive to finite-density corrections and that the second-order terms indicate the chiral crossover in the vector and axial-vector channels.