QCD Equation of State and Phase Diagram from Holographic Black Holes

TL;DR

This paper uses holographic black hole models based on the AdS/CFT correspondence to study the QCD phase diagram, predicting a critical end point and characterizing phase transitions in strongly interacting matter.

Contribution

It introduces a holographic Einstein-Maxwell-Dilaton model that reproduces lattice QCD results and predicts the QCD critical point and phase transition lines.

Findings

Predicts a critical end point in the QCD phase diagram.

Identifies two lines characterizing the crossover transition.

Shows the merging of these lines at the critical point.

Abstract

By using the AdS/CFT correspondence, we construct an Einstein-Maxwell-Dilaton model to map the thermodynamics of strongly interacting matter. The holographic model, constrained to reproduce the lattice QCD equation of state at zero baryon chemical potential, predicts a critical end point and a first order phase transition line. We also obtain the equation of state of the model for a large region of the phase diagram. We characterize the crossover transition region by two lines, one associated to the inflection of the second order baryon susceptibility, and another one associated to the minimum of the square of the speed of sound along trajectories of constant entropy per baryon number. We observe that both lines merge at the critical point.