Quark mass dependence of a QCD critical point and structure of the Columbia plot

TL;DR

This paper investigates how varying quark masses influence the location and nature of the QCD critical point and the structure of the Columbia plot, combining lattice QCD and Dyson-Schwinger equations to explore the phase diagram.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the quark-mass dependence of the QCD critical point and the structure of the Columbia plot using a hybrid lattice and Dyson-Schwinger approach.

Findings

Evidence for positive curvature of the second order surface at large real chemical potential.

Identification of a crossover region at imaginary chemical potential.

Support for a tricritical point at finite chemical potential in the chiral limit.

Abstract

We study the quark-mass dependence of the QCD critical point at varying bare up/down quark masses with fixed strange quark mass. We explore the corresponding second-order critical surface in the three-dimensional Columbia plot and study the extension of the associated crossover hyperplane at real and imaginary baryon chemical potential. To this end, we employ a by now well-tested combination of lattice Yang--Mills theory and a (truncated) version of Dyson--Schwinger equations at $N_f=2+1$ quark flavours. We find evidence for a positive curvature of the second order surface at (large) real chemical potential and a crossover region for imaginary chemical potential. Our results support the notion of a tricritical point at finite chemical potential in the chiral limit.