Critical Behaviour in Baryonic Matter

Abstract

First we consider the phenomenology of deconfinement and chiral symmetry restoration for strongly interacting matter at non-vanishing baryon number density. Subsequently, we present numerical results obtained by a Monte Carlo evaluation of statistical QCD on an 8³×3 lattice, using Wilson fermions with N_f = 2, in fourth order hopping parameter expansion, and suppressing the imaginary part of the fermion action. We consider baryonic chemical potentials up to µa = 0.6 (µ/Λ_L ≃ 200); in this range, the critical parameters for deconfinement and chiral symmetry restoration are found to coincide.

Joint work with B. Berg (Florida State University, Tallahassee), J. Engels, E. Kehl and B. Waltl (Fakultät für Physik, Universität Bielefeld), to be published in Z. Phys. C.