Hot and dense quark-gluon plasma thermodynamics from holographic black holes

TL;DR

This paper uses a holographic Einstein-Maxwell-Dilaton model to explore the thermodynamics and phase transitions of hot, dense QCD matter, extending previous work to higher baryon densities and identifying a first-order transition line.

Contribution

It introduces new numerical methods to map black hole solutions onto the QCD phase diagram and reports the first observation of a first-order phase transition line in this context.

Findings

Extended the phase diagram to higher baryon densities.

Identified the first-order phase transition line.

Compared results with lattice QCD data.

Abstract

We present new results on the equation of state and transition line of hot and dense strongly interacting QCD matter, obtained from a bottom-up Einstein-Maxwell-Dilaton holographic model. We considerably expand the previous coverage in baryon densities in this model by implementing new numerical methods to map the holographic black hole solutions onto the QCD phase diagram. We are also able to obtain, for the first time, the first-order phase transition line in a wide region of the phase diagram. Comparisons with the most recent lattice results for the QCD thermodynamics are also presented.