Search

The critical region of the two flavour quark-meson model with vector interactions is explored using the Functional Renormalization Group technique, a non-perturbative method that takes into account quantum and thermal fluctuations. Special attention is given to the low temperature and high density region of the phase diagram, which is very important for the evolution of proto-neutron stars and to construct the equation of state of compact stars. As in previous studies, without repulsive vector interaction, an unphysical region of negative entropy density is found near the first order chiral phase transition. We explore the connection between this unphysical region and the chiral critical region, especially the first order line and spinodal lines, using also different values for vector interactions. The effect of finite vector interactions in the critical region is explored. We find that the unphysical negative entropy density region appears because the $s=0$ isentropic line, near the critical region, is displaced from its $T=0$ location. For certain values of vector interactions this region is pushed to lower temperatures and high chemical potentials in such way that the negative entropy density region on the phase diagram of the model can even disapear. In the case of finite vector interactions, the location of the critical end point has a non-trivial behaviour in the $T-\mu_B$ plane, which differs from that in mean-field calculations., Comment: 16 pages, 6 figures

We study the isentropic evolution of the matter produced in relativistic heavy-ion collisions for various values of the entropy-per-baryon ratio of interest for the ongoing and future experimental searches for the critical endpoint (CEP) in the QCD phase diagram: these includes the current Beam-Energy-Scan (BES) program at RHIC and the fixed-target collisions foreseen for the near future at various facilities. We describe the hot-dense matter through two different effective Lagrangians: the PNJL (Polyakov-Nambu-Jona-Lasinio) and the PQM (Polyakov-quark-meson) models. We focus on quantities expected to have a direct experimental relevance: the speed of sound, responsible for the collective acceleration of the fireball, and the generalized susceptibilities, connected to the cumulants of the distributions of conserved charges. In principle, they should affect the momentum spectra and the event-by-event fluctuations of the yields of identified particles. Taking realistic values for the initial temperature and the entropy-per-baryon ratio we study the temporal evolution of the above quantities looking for differences along isentropic trajectories covering different regions of the QCD phase diagram, passing far or close to the CEP or even intersecting the first-order critical line.

The evolution of the fireball in heavy ion collisions is an isentropic process, meaning that it follows a trajectory of constant entropy per baryon in the phase diagram of the strong interaction. Responsible for the collective acceleration of the fireball is the speed of sound of the system, while fluctuations of conserved charges are encoded in quark-number susceptibilities: together, they leave their imprint in final observables. Here, this isentropic evolution will be analysed within chiral effective models that account for both chiral and center symmetry breaking, two central aspects of QCD. Our discussion focusses on the impact on the isentropic trajectories of the treatment of high-momentum modes, of the meson contribution to thermodynamics and of the number of quark flavours., Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, contribution to the proceedings of the FAIR next generation scientists - 6th Edition Workshop

The aim of this work is to shed light on some lesser known aspects of Polyakov-loop--extended chiral models (namely the Polyakov-loop extended Nambu--Jona-Lasinio and Quark-Meson models), especially on the correlation of the quark sector with the Polyakov loop. We show that the ordering of chiral and Polyakov-loop transitions and their difference in temperature as seen in lattice QCD calculations could be realized with a critical scale of the Polyakov-loop potential that is larger than the one in pure gauge theory. The comparison of the results for the Polyakov-loop susceptibility obtained using the self-consistent medium-dependent quark mass with those obtained while keeping these masses at a fixed value allows to disentangle chiral-symmetry restoration and center-symmetry breaking effects. Furthermore, a confined chirally restored phase is identified by a plateau in the quark contribution to thermodynamics and by sigma and pion spectral functions that coincide but have a small width. We also discuss that, for some large chemical potential values, the explicit center-symmetry breaking is so strong that statistical deconfinement is realized at infinitely small temperatures. Both the missing sensitivity of the Polyakov loop to the quark mass, except at close to the chiral transition, and the Polyakov loop being zero at zero temperature at all chemical potentials, can be interpreted as indications of a missing mechanism which accounts for the quark back-reaction on the Polyakov loop., Comment: 18 pages, 13 figures, version published in Phys. Rev. D

Unquenching of the Polyakov-loop potential showed to be an important improvement for the description of the phase structure and thermodynamics of strongly-interacting matter at zero quark chemical potentials with Polyakov-loop extended chiral models. This work constitutes the first application of the quark backreaction on the Polyakov-loop potential at nonzero density. The observation is that it links the chiral and deconfinement phase transition also at small temperatures and large quark chemical potentials. The build up of the surface tension in the Polyakov-loop extended Quark-Meson model is explored by investigating the two and 2+1-flavour Quark-Meson model and analysing the impact of the Polyakov-loop extension. In general, the order of magnitude of the surface tension is given by the chiral phase transition. The coupling of the chiral and deconfinement transition with the unquenched Polyakov-loop potential leads to the fact that the Polyakov-loop contributes at all temperatures., Comment: 28 pages, 13 figures; version published in Phys. Rev. D

The recent observations of the massive pulsars PSR J1614-2230 and of PSR J0348+0432 with about two solar masses implies strong constraints on the properties of dense matter in the core of compact stars. Effective models of QCD aiming to describe neutron star matter can thereby be considerably constrained. In this context, a chiral quark-meson model based on a SU(3) linear $\sigma$-model with a vacuum pressure and vector meson exchange is discussed in this work. The impact of its various terms and parameters on the equation of state and the maximum mass of compact stars are delineated to check whether pure quark stars with two solar masses are feasible within this approach. Large vector meson coupling constant and a small vacuum pressure allow for maximum masses of two or more solar masses. However, pure quark stars made of absolutely stable strange quark matter, so called strange stars, turn out to be restricted to a quite small parameter range., Comment: 10 pages, 13 figures, matches published version in PRD

The quark-meson model is investigated for the two- and three-flavor case extended by contributions of vector mesons under conditions encountered in core-collapse supernova matter. Typical temperature ranges, densities and electron fractions, as found in core-collapse supernova simulations, are studied by implementing charge neutrality and local beta-equilibrium with respect to weak interactions. Within this framework, we analyze the resulting phase diagram and equation of state (EoS) and investigate the impact of undetermined parameters of the model. The EoS turns out to be relatively independent on the entropy per baryon but there are significant changes when going from the two-flavor to the three-flavor case due to the nontrivial contribution from the strange quarks which stay massive even at high densities. While an increasing vector meson coupling constant leads to a substantial stiffening of the EoS, we find that the impact of changing the scalar meson mass is equally strong and results in a softening of the EoS for increasing values., Comment: 9 pages, 10 figures

We put forward a Polyakov-loop extended quark meson model, where matter as well as glue fluctuations are taken into account, cf. [1]. The latter are included via a Polyakov-loop potential. Usually such a glue potential is based on Yang-Mills lattice data only. We show that a parametrisation of unquenching effects as proposed in [2], together with the inclusion of fluctuations via the functional renormalisation group [3,4], accounts for the relevant dynamics. This is demonstrated by a comparison of order parameters and thermodynamic observables to recent lattice results at vanishing chemical potential, where we find very good agreement., Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures, contribution to "QCD-TNT-III: From quarks and gluons to hadronic matter: A bridge too far?", ECT*, Trento (Italy), September 2-6, 2013

We study the phase structure of QCD at finite temperature within a Polyakov-loop enhanced quark-meson model. Such a model describes the chiral as well as the confinement-deconfinement dynamics. In the present investigation, based on the approach and results put forward in [1-4], both, matter as well as glue fluctuations are included. We present results for the order parameters as well as some thermodynamic observables and find very good agreement with recent results from lattice QCD., Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures; published version

We investigate the phase structure of strongly interacting matter at non-vanishing isospin before the onset of pion condensation in the framework of the unquenched Polyakov-Quark-Meson model with 2+1 quark flavors. We show results for the order parameters and all relevant thermodynamic quantities. In particular, we obtain a moderate change of the pressure with isospin at vanishing baryon chemical potential, whereas the chiral condensate decreases more appreciably. We compare the effective model to recent lattice data for the decrease of the pseudo-critical temperature with the isospin chemical potential. We also demonstrate the major role played by the value of the pion mass in the curvature of the transition line, and the need for lattice results with a physical pion mass. Limitations of the model at nonzero chemical potential are also discussed., Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures; version published in Phys. Lett. B

We analyse the role of the quark backreaction on the gauge-field dynamics and its impact on the Polyakov-loop potential. Based on our analysis we construct an improved Polyakov-loop potential that can be used in future model studies. In the present work, we employe this improved potential in a study of a 2+1 flavour Polyakov-quark-meson model and show that the temperature dependence of the order parameters and thermodynamics is closer to full QCD. We discuss the results for QCD thermodynamics and outline briefly the dependence of our results on the critical temperature and the parametrisation of the Polyakov-loop potential as well as the mass of the sigma-meson., Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures; contribution to the PoS Proceedings of the 'Xth Quark Confinement and the Hadron Spectrum' (8-12 October 2012, Munich, Germany), PoS(Confinement X)215

We investigate the quark backreaction on the Polyakov loop and its impact on the thermodynamics of quantum chromodynamics. The dynamics of the gluons generating the Polyakov-loop potential is altered by the presence of dynamical quarks. However, this backreaction of the quarks has not yet been taken into account in Polyakov-loop extended model studies. In the present work, we show within a 2+1 flavour Polyakov-quark-meson model that a quark-improved Polyakov-loop potential leads to a smoother transition between the low-temperature hadronic phase and the high-temperature quark-gluon plasma phase. In particular, we discuss the dependence of our results on the remaining uncertainties that are the critical temperature and the parametrisation of the Polyakov-loop potential as well as the mass of the sigma-meson., Comment: 19 pages, 25 figures; version published in Phys. Rev. D

We obtain the in-medium effective potential of the three-flavor Polyakov-Quark-Meson model as a real function of real variables in the Polyakov loop variable, to allow for the study of all possible minima of the model. At finite quark chemical potential, the real and imaginary parts of the effective potential, in terms of the Polyakov loop variables, are made apparent, showing explicitly the fermion sign problem of the theory. The phase diagram and other equilibrium observables, obtained from the real part of the effective potential, are calculated in the mean-field approximation. The obtained results are compared to those found with the so-called saddle-point approach. Our procedure also allows the calculation of the surface tension between the chirally broken and confined phase, and the chirally restored and deconfined phase. The values of surface tension we find for low temperatures are very close to the ones recently found for two-flavor chiral models. Some consequences of our results for the early Universe, for heavy-ion collisions, and for proto-neutron stars are briefly discussed., Comment: 17 pages, 6 figures. V2: typos fixed, references added

We investigate cosmological implications of an energy density contribution arising by elastic dark matter self-interactions. Its scaling behaviour shows that it can be the dominant energy contribution in the early universe. Constraints from primordial nucleosynthesis give an upper limit on the self-interaction strength which allows for the same strength as standard model strong interactions. Furthermore we explore the cosmological consequences of an early self-interaction dominated universe. Chemical dark matter decoupling requires that self-interacting dark matter particles are rather light (keV range) but we find that super-weak inelastic interactions are predicted by strong elastic dark matter self-interactions. Assuming a second, collisionless cold dark matter component, its natural decoupling scale exceeds the weak scale and is in accord with the electron and positron excess observed by PAMELA and Fermi-LAT. Structure formation analysis reveals a linear growing solution during self-interaction domination, enhancing structures up to ~ 10^(-3) solar masses long before the formation of the first stars., Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures; contribution to the POS Proceedings of the 25th Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics (December 6-10, 2010, Heidelberg, Germany)

We investigate cosmological constraints on an energy density contribution of elastic dark matter self-interactions characterized by the mass of the exchange particle and coupling constant. Because of the expansion behaviour in a Robertson-Walker metric we investigate self-interacting dark matter that is warm in the case of thermal relics. The scaling behaviour of dark matter self-interaction energy density shows that it can be the dominant contribution (only) in the very early universe. Thus its impact on primordial nucleosynthesis is used to restrict the interaction strength, which we find to be at least as strong as the strong interaction. Furthermore we explore dark matter decoupling in a self-interaction dominated universe, which is done for the self-interacting warm dark matter as well as for collisionless cold dark matter in a two component scenario. We find that strong dark matter self-interactions do not contradict super-weak inelastic interactions between self-interacting dark matter and baryonic matter and that the natural scale of collisionless cold dark matter decoupling exceeds the weak scale and depends linearly on the particle mass. Finally structure formation analysis reveals a linear growing solution during self-interaction domination; however, only non-cosmological scales are enhanced., Comment: 14 pages, 14 figures; version published in Phys. Rev. D