Phase diagram of QCD at finite temperature and chemical potential from lattice simulations with dynamical Wilson quarks

TL;DR

This paper presents pioneering lattice QCD simulations at finite temperature and chemical potential using Wilson quarks, revealing the phase transition behavior relevant to quark-gluon plasma research.

Contribution

First lattice QCD results at finite T and μ with Wilson quarks, employing imaginary chemical potential and analytic continuation techniques.

Findings

Transition line on (μ, T) plane identified

First order transition at small/large quark mass

Crossover at intermediate quark mass

Abstract

We present the first results for lattice QCD at finite temperature $T$ and chemical potential $\mu$ with four flavors of Wilson quarks. The calculations are performed using the imaginary chemical potential method at $\kappa=0$, 0.001, 0.15, 0.165, 0.17 and 0.25, where $\kappa$ is the hopping parameter, related to the bare quark mass $m$ and lattice spacing $a$ by $\kappa=1/(2ma+8)$. Such a method allows us to do large scale Monte Carlo simulations at imaginary chemical potential $\mu=i \mu_I$. By analytic continuation of the data with $\mu_I < \pi T/3$ to real values of the chemical potential, we expect at each $\kappa\in [0,\kappa_{chiral}]$, a transition line on the $(\mu, T)$ plane, in a region relevant to the search for quark gluon plasma in heavy-ion collision experiments. The transition is first order at small or large quark mass, and becomes a crossover at intermediate quark mass.