An overview of the QCD phase diagram at finite $T$ and $\mu$

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent progress in understanding the QCD phase diagram at finite temperature and chemical potential, emphasizing developments with lattice QCD and their relevance to cosmology and heavy ion collisions.

Contribution

It provides an overview of recent lattice QCD results on the QCD phase diagram, including effects of external influences and extended parameter ranges.

Findings

Advances in lattice QCD studies of the QCD phase diagram.

Insights into the QCD transition relevant for early universe and collider experiments.

Potential for theory-experiment comparisons in heavy ion physics.

Abstract

In recent years there has been much progress on the investigation of the QCD phase diagram with lattice QCD. This talk will focus on the developments in the last few years. Especially the addition of external influences and extended ranges of $T$ and $\mu$ yield an increasing number of interesting results, a subset of which will be discussed. Many of these conditions are important for the understanding of both the QCD transition in the early universe and heavy ion collision experiments which are conducted for example at the LHC and RHIC. This offers many exciting opportunities for comparisons between theory and experiment.