2003/01/17 by B. Klein, D. Toublan, J. J. M. Verbaarschot · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Baryon #Chiral perturbation theory #Hadron #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Isospin #Lattice QCD #Particle physics #Phase (matter) #Phase diagram #Physics #Pion #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions #Quantum chromodynamics #Quantum mechanics #Quark #Quark–gluon plasma #Theoretical and Computational Physics #Thermal quantum field theory #hep-lat #hep-ph #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.68.014009
published as Phys.Rev. D68 (2003) 014009 · 13 pages, 5 figures, REVTeX4
arxiv created 2003/01/17 · openalex publication_date 2003/07/10 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We introduce a random matrix model with the symmetries of QCD at finite temperature and chemical potentials for baryon number and isospin. We analyze the phase diagram of this model in the chemical potential plane for different temperatures and quark masses. We find a rich phase structure with five different phases separated by both first and second order lines. The phases are characterized by the pion condensate and the chiral condensate for each of the flavors. In agreement with lattice simulations, we find that in the phase with zero pion condensate the critical temperature depends in the same way on the baryon number chemical potential and on the isospin chemical potential. At nonzero quark mass, we find, remarkably, that the critical end point at nonzero temperature and baryon chemical potential is split in two by an arbitrarily small isospin chemical potential. As a consequence, there are two crossovers that separate the hadronic phase from the quark-gluon plasma phase at high temperature. Detailed analytical results are obtained at zero temperature and in the chiral limit.