2008/01/31 by Pedro Costa, M. C. Ruivo, C. A. de Sousa · 4 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.77.096001
published as Phys.Rev.D77:096001,2008 · 29 pages, 8 figures; PRD version
openalex publication_date 2008/05/19 · arxiv created 2008/06/17 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We investigate the phase diagram of strongly interacting matter as a function of temperature and baryonic density/chemical potential, within Nambu--Jona-Lasinio type models. We perform a systematic study concerning the existence, location, and properties of a critical end point/tricritical point, both in SU(2) and SU(3) versions of the model. We verify that, for mu=md=0 and up to a critical strange quark mass, there is a tricritical point, which becomes a critical end point in a world with realistic values of the current quark masses. The properties of physical observables, such as the baryon number susceptibility and the specific heat, are analyzed in the vicinity of the critical end point, with special focus on their critical exponents. The behavior of mesons in the T\ensuremath-\ensuremathμB(\ensuremathρB) plane is analyzed in connection with possible signatures of partial and effective restoration of chiral symmetry.