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We investigate the fluctuations of the net-baryon number near the critical point of the liquid-gas phase transition. We use the parity doublet model in the mean-field approximation fixed to the zero-temperature properties of nuclear matter to account for critical behavior. We explicitly calculate the fluctuations of the net-proton and net-neutron numbers as well as their correlations in the isospin-symmetric matter. We focus on the qualitative properties and systematics of the first- to fourth-order susceptibilities and their ratios. We demonstrate that the fluctuations of net-proton number do not reflect the total net-baryon number fluctuations in the vicinity of the nuclear liquid-gas phase transition. We point to the importance of the non-trivial correlations between protons and neutrons.

We present the production systematics of open charm hadron yields in high-energy collisions and their description based on the Statistical Hadronization Model. The rapidity density of $D^0, D^+, D^{*+}, D_s^+$ mesons and $\Lambda_c^+$ baryons in heavy ion and proton-proton collisions is analyzed for different collision energies and centralities. The Statistical Hadronization Model is extended to open charm production in minimum-bias and high-multiplicity pp collisions. In this context, we use the link established in [1], see also the further development in [2], between the rapidity density of open charm hadron yields, $dN_i/dy$, and the rapidity density of charm-anticharm quark pairs, $dN_{c\bar c}/d\eta$ to demonstrate that, in pp, pA and AA collisions, $dN_i/dy$ scales in leading order with $dN_{c\bar c}/d\eta$ and the slope coefficient is quantified by the appropriate thermal density ratio calculated at the chiral crossover temperature, $T_c=156.5$ MeV. It is also shown that, in high energy collisions and within uncertainties, $dN_i/dy$ exhibits the power-law scaling with the charged-particle pseudo-rapidity density. Furthermore, presently available data on different ratios of open charm rapidity densities in high-energy collisions are independent of collision energy and system size, as expected in the Statistical Hadronization Model., Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures

We discuss the modeling of the hadronic phase of QCD at finite magnetic field in the framework of hadron resonance gas (HRG). We focus on the statistical description of particle yields that include contribution from resonance decays. We demonstrate that the swift increase in the number of protons with magnetic field predicted in the HRG is due to the ill-defined description of higher-spin states. We discuss fluctuations of conserved charges and show that at present the qualitative comparison of the model predictions with the Lattice QCD data should be treated with care. We also discuss the principle of detailed balance which allows to study the magnetic field dependence of neutral resonances., Comment: version accepted for publication in PRC

The study of event-by-event fluctuations of net-baryon number in a subspace of full phase space is a promising direction for deciphering the structure of strongly interacting matter created in head-on collisions of relativistic heavy nuclei. Such fluctuations are generally suppressed by exact baryon number conservation. Moreover, the suppression is stronger if baryon number is conserved locally. In this report we present a conceptually new approach to quantify correlations in rapidity space between baryon-antibaryon, baryon-baryon, and antibaryon-antibaryon pairs and demonstrate their impact on net-baryon number fluctuations. For the special case of Gaussian rapidity distributions, we use the Cholesky factorization of the covariance matrix, while the general case is introduced by exploiting the well-known Metropolis and Simulated Annealing methods. The approach is based on the use of the canonical ensemble of statistical mechanics for baryon number and can be applied to study correlations between baryons as well as strange and/or charm hadrons. It can also be applied to describe relativistic nuclear collisions leading to the production of multi-particle final states. One application of our method is the search for formation of proton clusters at low collision energies emerging as a harbinger of the anticipated first-order chiral phase transition. In a first step, the results obtained are compared to the recent measurements from the CERN ALICE collaboration. Such investigations are key to explore the phase diagram of strongly interacting matter and baryon production mechanisms at energy scales from several GeV to several TeV.

In this contribution, we use the parity doublet model to investigate the fluctuations of the net-baryon number density. We discuss the systematics of the susceptibilities and their ratios for nucleons of positive and negative parity, as well as their correlator. We demonstrate that the fluctuations of positive-parity nucleon do not reflect the fluctuations of the total net-baryon number at the chiral phase transition., Comment: prepared for the Quark Matter 2023 proceedings

Neutron stars (NSs) serve as laboratories for probing strongly interacting matter at the most extreme densities. Their inner cores are expected to be dense enough to host deconfined quark matter. Utilizing state-of-the-art theoretical and multi-messenger constraints, we statistically determine the bulk properties of dense NS matter. We show that the speed of sound can be expressed in terms of the slope and curvature of the energy per particle. We demonstrate that the restoration of conformal symmetry requires changing the sign of the curvature of the bulk energy per particle as a function of energy density. Furthermore, we find that such a sign change is closely related to the peak in the speed of sound. We argue that the curvature of the energy per particle may serve as an approximate order parameter that signifies the onset of strongly coupled conformal matter in the NS core., Comment: corrected references

We investigate the effect of screening of the four-quarks contact interactions by the ring diagram at finite temperature and density in an effective chiral model inspired by QCD in the Coulomb gauge. As a consequence, a medium-dependent coupling naturally emerges which, in a class of chiral models, brings the chiral crossover temperature down to the value calculated in LQCD at low net-baryon density. Furthermore, it implies a stronger divergence of the chiral susceptibility at the critical point compared to the mean-field dynamics. At vanishing temperature, however, the transition sets in at unphysically small chemical potential, indicating a need for additional effects to compensate for the screening strength. We discuss the properties of an effective potential for a class of models described by momentum-independent gap equations. In particular, we introduce the method to construct an approximate effective potential from the gap equations to determine the location of the first-order phase transition., Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures

Fluctuations and correlations of the net-baryon number play an important role in exploring critical phenomena in phase transitions of strongly interacting matter governed by Quantum chromodynamics (QCD). In this work, we use the parity doublet model to investigate the fluctuations of the net-baryon number density in hot and dense hadronic matter. The model accounts for chiral criticality within the mean-field approximation. We focus on the qualitative properties and systematics of the first- and second-order susceptibility of the net-baryon number density, and their ratios for nucleons of positive and negative parity, as well as their correlator. We show that the fluctuations of the positive-parity nucleon do not necessarily reflect the fluctuations of the total net-baryon number density at the phase boundary of the chiral phase transition. We also investigate the non-trivial structure of the correlator. Furthermore, we discuss and quantify the differences between the fluctuations of the net-baryon number density in the vicinity of the chiral and liquid-gas phase transition in nuclear matter. We indicate a possible relevance of our results with the interpretation of the experimental data on net-proton number fluctuations in heavy-ion collisions., Comment: Matches published version

Finite volume effects are studied both with low-momentum cutoff and with momentum discretization in the framework of an (axial)vector meson extended quark-meson model with Polyakov-loop variables. In the momentum cutoff scenario, the CEP moves to lower temperatures and larger quark chemical potentials as the characteristic system size is reduced, however, the treatment of the vacuum term significantly affects its trajectory. The size dependence of the baryon fluctuations is also studied by the kurtosis and the skewness, both of which show moderate dependence on temperature and some dependence on quark chemical potential. The order of the phase transition is also studied near the chiral limit at finite system size and found to be second-order only at vanishing explicit breaking. The implementation of the finite size effect with momentum discretization is more complicated and shows peculiar behavior due to the different modes dropping below the Fermi surface and strong dependence on the type of the boundary condition chosen. We found that both the different boundary conditions and the treatment of the vacuum term cause significant changes in the trajectory of the CEP as the characteristic system size is changed., Comment: 20 pages, 24 figures

Contrary to field theoretical calculations in the thermodynamic limit where the volume is assumed to be infinitely large, the heavy-ion collisions always carry the effects of finite size. A sufficiently small system size is expected to affect the thermodynamic quantities and the phase diagram of the strongly interacting matter. To study these effects one can take into account the finite spatial extent of the system within the framework of an effective model too, via the restriction of the momentum integrals using discretization or in a simplified case using a low momentum cutoff. We investigated the effects of the finite volume in a vector meson extended Polyakov quark-meson model and found a remarkable change in the thermodynamics and the phase transition, especially in the location of the critical endpoint., Comment: Presented at the FAIRness2022 conference

We investigate the fluctuations of the net-baryon number density in dense hadronic matter. Chiral dynamics is modeled via the parity doublet Lagrangian, and the mean-field approximation is employed to account for chiral criticality. We focus on the qualitative properties and systematics of the second-order susceptibility of the net-baryon number density for individual positive- and negative-parity nucleons whose masses become degenerate at the chiral restoration. It is shown that the second-order susceptibility of the positive-parity state can become negative when the chiral symmetry is restored, as a natural consequence of the unique relationship of the mass to the order parameter. Moreover, we find that such negative fluctuations are indicative of approaching the critical point on the chiral phase boundary. Our results may have consequences for the interpretation of the experimental data on net-proton fluctuations in heavy-ion collisions., Comment: Version accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2012.15535

Speed of sound is given attention in multi-messenger astronomy as it encodes information of the dense matter equation of state. Recently the trace anomaly was proposed as a more informative quantity. In this work, we statistically determine the speed of sound and trace anomaly and show that they are driven to their conformal values at the centers of maximally massive neutron stars. We show that the local peak in the speed of sound can be associated with deconfinement along with percolation conditions in QCD matter., Comment: Contribution to the Proceedings of 15th Quark Confinement and the Hadron Spectrum (based on arXiv:2207.13059)

The increase in yields of light nuclei with charged particle multiplicity, as reported by the ALICE collaboration at CERN in p-p and p-Pb collisions at the LHC energy is investigated in the thermal hadron resonance gas model. The model is extended to account for exact baryon number conservation. The focus is on the production of protons, deuterons, $^3$He, and $^3_\Lambda$H. A very good description of proton and deuteron yields is obtained as a function of charged particle multiplicity in the mid-rapidity region using the same fixed temperature as in central Pb-Pb collisions. The yields of light nuclei $^3$He and $^3_\Lambda$H though qualitatively explained as a function of multiplicity, are lower than the model expectation. One of the possible reasons could be that for $^{3}$He and $^{3}_{\Lambda}$H, the chemical equilibrium is not yet reached at small multiplicities., Comment: 12 pages, 3 captioned figures

We consider the parity doublet model for nucleonic and delta matter to investigate the structure of neutron stars. We show that it is possible to reconcile the multi-messenger astronomy constraints within a purely hadronic equation of state (EOS), which accounts for the self-consistent treatment of the chiral symmetry restoration in the baryonic sector. We demonstrate that the characteristics of the EOS required by the astrophysical constraints do not necessarily imply the existence of a hadron-quark phase transition in the stellar core., Comment: Presented at Quark Matter 2022

Generating an ensemble of equations of state that fulfill multimessenger constraints, we statistically determine the properties of dense matter found inside neutron stars (NSs). We calculate the speed of sound and trace anomaly and demonstrate that they are driven towards their conformal values at the center of maximally massive NSs. The local peak of the speed of sound is shown to be located at values of the energy and particle densities which are consistent with deconfinement and percolation conditions in QCD matter. We also analyze fluctuations of the net-baryon number density in the context of possible remnants of critical behavior. We find that the global maxima of the variance of these fluctuations emerge at densities beyond those found in the interiors of NSs., Comment: version accepted for publication in Physical Review C

We investigate the increase in strangeness production with charged particle multiplicity ($dN_{ch}/dy$) seen by the ALICE collaboration at CERN in p-p, p-Pb and Pb-Pb collisions using the hadron resonance gas model. The strangeness canonical ensemble is used taking into account the interactions among hadrons using S-matrix corrections based on known phase shift analyses. We show the essential role of constraints due to the exact conservation of strangeness which is instrumental to describing observed features of strange particle yields and their scaling with $dN_{ch}/dy$. Furthermore, the results on comparing the hadron resonance gas model with and without S-matrix corrections, are presented. We observe that the interactions introduced by the phase shift analysis via the S-matrix formalism are essential for a better description of the yields data independent of collision system. This work is based on our long-lasting collaboration and most recent publications with Jean Cleymans., Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, 19th International Conference of Strangeness in Quark Matter (SQM 2021)

We study fluctuations in the canonical ensemble, where the net baryon number is exactly conserved. The focus is on cumulants and factorial cumulants linked to the baryon and antibaryon multiplicities and their sum or difference in full phase-space as well as in subsystems. In particular, we connect the fluctuations of the net baryon number in a subsystem, relevant for fluctuation studies in nucleus-nucleus collisions, with fluctuations of the baryon and antibaryon numbers of the total system. We derive analytic expressions for factorial cumulants of arbitrary order. Compact results are obtained in terms of cumulants of the baryon number of the total system. Moreover, we derive the asymptotic forms of the factorial cumulants of baryon and antibaryon multiplicities in the high- and low-temperature limits and discuss the results in the context of heavy-ion collision experiments.

We analyze the effects of chiral symmetry restoration in hadronic matter, including the lowest-lying baryonic resonance $\Delta$ based on the parity doublet model. We study the role of $\Delta$ and its chiral partner on the equation of state (EoS) of dense matter under neutron star (NS) conditions of $\beta$-equilibrium and charge neutrality. We find that the softening of the EoS driven by the early onset of $\Delta$ matter due to partial restoration of chiral symmetry allows accommodating the modern multi-messenger astrophysical constraints on the mass, radius, and tidal deformability. The softening above the saturation density is accompanied by subsequent stiffening at high densities. We also find that the matter composition in the NS cores may be different upon variations of the repulsive interactions of $\Delta$ baryons in hadronic matter., Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2110.11056, arXiv:2004.09566

We analyze the recent astrophysical constraints in the context of a hadronic equation of state (EoS), in which the baryonic matter is subject to chiral symmetry restoration. We show that with such EoS it is possible to reconcile the modern constraints on the neutron star (NS) mass, radius, and tidal deformability (TD). We find that the softening of the EoS, required by the TD constraint of a canonical $1.4~M_\odot$ NS, followed by a subsequent stiffening, required by the $2~M_\odot$ constraint, is driven by the appearance of $\Delta$ matter due to partial restoration of chiral symmetry. Consequently, a purely hadronic EoS that accounts for the fundamental properties of quantum chromodynamics linked to the dynamical emergence of parity doubling with degenerate masses of nucleons and $\Delta$ resonances can be fully consistent with multi-messenger data. Therefore, with the present constraints on the EoS, the conclusion about the existence of the quark matter in the stellar core may still be premature., Comment: version accepted for publication ApJ Letters

We explore fluctuations of the net-baryon number density in hadronic matter at vanishing chemical potential. We discuss the interplay between chiral dynamics and repulsive interactions and their influence on the properties of these fluctuations near the chiral crossover in the parity doublet model. We find that the characteristic properties of cumulants are entirely linked to the critical chiral dynamics and cannot be reproduced in phenomenological models, which account only for repulsive interactions. Consequently, a description of the higher-order cumulants of the net-baryon density requires a self-consistent treatment of the chiral in-medium effects and repulsive interactions., Comment: prepared for the Proceedings of "Critical Point and Onset of Deconfinement - CPOD 2021"

We study the dressing of four-quark interaction by the ring diagram, and its feeding back to the quark gap equation, in an effective chiral quark model. Implementing such an in-medium coupling naturally reduces the chiral transition temperature in a class of chiral models, and is capable of generating the inverse magnetic catalysis at finite temperatures. We also demonstrate the important role of confining forces, via the Polyakov loop, in a positive feedback mechanism which reinforces the inverse magnetic catalysis., Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, version appear in EPJA

We study the screening of four-quark interaction by the ring diagram in an effective chiral quark model. This entails a medium dependent coupling which naturally reduces the chiral transition temperature in a class of models, and is capable of generating an inverse magnetic catalysis at finite temperature. These results are the first coherent description of inverse magnetic catalysis, anchored to a reliable field-theoretical basis., Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures

In relativistic nuclear collisions the production of hadrons with light (u,d,s) quarks is quantitatively described in the framework of the Statistical Hadronization Model (SHM). Charm quarks are dominantly produced in initial hard collisions but interact strongly in the hot fireball and thermalize. Therefore charmed hadrons can be incorporated into the SHM by treating charm quarks as 'impurities' with thermal distributions, while the total charm content of the fireball is fixed by the measured open charm cross section. We call this model SHMc and demonstrate that with SHMc the measured multiplicities of single charm hadrons in lead-lead collisions at LHC energies can be well described with the same thermal parameters as for (u,d,s) hadrons. Furthermore, transverse momentum distributions are computed in a blast-wave model, which includes the resonance decay kinematics. SHMc is extended to lighter collision systems down to oxygen-oxygen and includes doubly- and triply-charmed hadrons. We show predictions for production probabilities of such states exhibiting a characteristic and quite spectacular enhancement hierarchy., Comment: 28 pages, 12 figures

We investigate features of the deconfinement phase transition in an $SU(N_c)$ gauge theory as revealed by fluctuations of the order parameter. The tool of choice is an effective model built from one-loop expressions of the field determinants of gluon and ghost, in the presence of a Polyakov loop background field. We show that the curvature masses associated with the Cartan angles, which serve as a proxy to study the $A_0$-gluon screening mass, show a characteristic dip in the vicinity of the transition temperature. The strength of the observables, which reflects a competition between the confining and the deconfining forces, is sensitive to assumptions of dynamics, thus provides an interesting link between the $Z(N_c)$ vacuum structure and the properties of gluon and ghost propagators., Comment: 15 pages, 6 figures, typos. corrected, version appear in PRD

We investigate fluctuations of the net-baryon number density in hot hadronic matter. We discuss the interplay between chiral dynamics and repulsive interactions and their influence on the properties of these fluctuations near the chiral crossover. The chiral dynamics is modeled by the parity doublet Lagrangian that incorporates the attractive and repulsive interactions mediated via the exchange of scalar and vector mesons, respectively. The mean-field approximation is employed to account for chiral criticality. We focus on the properties and systematics of the cumulants of the net-baryon number density up to the sixth order. It is shown that the higher-order cumulants exhibit a substantial suppression in the vicinity of the chiral phase transition due to the presence of repulsive interactions. We find, however, that the characteristic properties of cumulants near the chiral crossover observed in lattice QCD results are entirely linked to the critical chiral dynamics and, in general, cannot be reproduced in phenomenological models, which account only for effective repulsive interactions via excluded-volume corrections or van-der-Waals type interactions. Consequently, a description of the higher-order cumulants of the net-baryon density in the chiral crossover requires a self-consistent treatment of the chiral in-medium effects and repulsive interactions.

Recently the ALICE collaboration has observed an interesting systematic behaviour of ratios of identified particles to pions yields at the LHC, showing that they depend solely on the charged-particle multiplicity in pp, pPb and PbPb collisions. In particular, the yields of (multi)strange particles relative to pions, increases with multiplicity and the enhancement is mode pronounced with increasing strangeness content. We will argue, that such a pattern of arises naturally in the thermal model taking into account exact strangeness conservation. Furthermore, extending the thermal model by including hadron interactions within the S-matrix approach, the ALICE data can be well quantified by the thermal particle yields at the chiral-crossover temperature, as previously found in central Pb-Pb collisions., Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures

The increase in strangeness production with charged particle multiplicity, as seen by the ALICE collaboration at CERN in p-p, p-Pb and Pb-Pb collisions, is investigated in the hadron resonance gas model taking into account interactions among hadrons using S-matrix corrections based on known phase shift analyses. Strangeness conservation is taken into account in the framework of the canonical strangeness ensemble. A very good description is obtained for the variation of the strangeness content in the final state as a function of the number of charged hadrons in the mid-rapidity region using the same fixed temperature value as obtained in the most central Pb-Pb collisions. It is shown that the number of charged hadrons is linearly proportional to the volume of the system. For small multiplicities the canonical ensemble with local strangeness conservation restricted to mid-rapidity leads to a stronger suppression of (multi-)strange baryons than seen in the data. This is compensated by introducing a global conservation of strangeness in the whole phase-space which is parameterized by the canonical correlation volume larger than the fireball volume at the mid-rapidity. The results on comparing the hadron resonance gas model with and without S-matrix corrections, are presented in detail. It is shown that the interactions introduced by the phase shift analysis via the S-matrix formalism are essential for a better description of the yields data., Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures

We study the influence of global baryon number conservation on the non-critical baseline of net baryon cumulants in heavy-ion collisions in a given acceptance, accounting for the asymmetry between the mean-numbers of baryons and antibaryons. We derive the probability distribution of net baryon number in a restricted phase space from the canonical partition function that incorporates exact conservation of baryon number in the full system. Furthermore, we provide tools to compute cumulants of any order from the generating function of uncorrelated baryons constrained by exact baryon number conservation. The results are applied to quantify the non-critical baseline for cumulants of net proton number fluctuations obtained in heavy-ion collisions by the STAR collaboration at different RHIC energies and by the ALICE collaboration at the LHC. Furthermore, volume fluctuations are added by a Monte Carlo procedure based on the centrality dependence of charged particle production as measured experimentally. Compared to the predictions based on the hadron resonance gas model or Skellam distribution a clear suppression of fluctuations is observed due to exact baryon-number conservation. The suppression increases with the order of the cumulant and towards lower collision energies. Predictions for net proton cumulants up to the eight order in heavy-ion collisions are given for experimentally accessible collision energies.

We present a first step in developing a benchmark equation-of-state (EoS) model for multi-messenger astronomy that unifies the thermodynamics of quark and hadronic degrees of freedom. A Lagrangian approach to the thermodynamic potential of quark-meson-nucleon (QMN) matter was used. In this approach, dynamical chiral-symmetry breaking is described by the scalar mean-field dynamics coupled to quarks and nucleons and their chiral partners, whereby its restoration occurs in the hadronic phase by parity doubling, as well as in the quark phase. Quark confinement was achieved by an auxiliary scalar field that parametrizes a dynamical infrared cutoff in the quark sector, serving as an ultraviolet cutoff for the nucleonic phase space. The gap equations were solved for the isospin-symmetric case, as well as for neutron star (NS) conditions. We also calculated the mass-radius (MR) relation of NSs and their tidal deformability parameter. The obtained EoS is in accordance with nuclear matter properties at saturation density and with the flow constraint from heavy ion collision experiments. For isospin-asymmetric matter, a sequential occurrence of light quark flavors is obtained, allowing for a mixed phase of chirally-symmetric nucleonic matter with deconfined down quarks. The MR relations and TDs for compact stars fulfill the constraints from the latest astrophysical observations for PSR J0740+6620, PSR J0030+0451, and the NS merger GW170817, whereby the tension between the maximum mass and compactness constraints rather uniquely fixes the model parameters. The model predicts the existence of stars with a core of chirally restored but purely hadronic (confined) matter for masses beyond $1.8~M_\odot$. Stars with pure-quark matter cores are found to be unstable against the gravitational collapse. This instability is shifted to even higher densities if repulsive interactions between quarks are included., Comment: version accepted for publication in A&A

We study the impact of a finite magnetic field on the deconfinement phase transition for heavy quarks by computing the fluctuations of the Polyakov loops. It is demonstrated that the explicit Z(3) breaking field increases with the magnetic field, leading to a decrease in the (pseudo) critical temperatures and a shrinking first-order region in the phase diagram. Phenomenological equations that capture the behaviors of the Z(3) breaking field at strong and weak magnetic fields for massive and massless quarks are given. Lastly, we explore the case of dynamical light quarks and demonstrate how an improved constituent quark mass function can enforce the correct magnetic field dependence of the deconfinement temperature in an effective model, as observed in Lattice QCD calculations., Comment: 17 pages, 13 figures, version in Phys. Rev. D

Net-proton number fluctuations can be measured experimentally and hence provide a source of important information about the matter created during relativistic heavy ion collisions. Particularly, they may give us clues about the conjectured QCD critical point. In this work the beam-energy dependence of ratios of the first four cumulants of the net-proton number is discussed. These quantities are calculated using a phenomenologically motivated model in which critical mode fluctuations couple to protons and anti-protons. Our model qualitatively captures both the monotonic behavior of the lowest-order ratio as well as the non-monotonic behavior of higher-order ratios, as seen in the experimental data from the STAR Collaboration. We also discuss the dependence of our results on the coupling strength and the location of the critical point., Comment: Proceedings of New Trends in High-Energy Physics conference, Odessa, Ukraine, May 12-18, 2019. 6 pages, 5 figures

We study the temperature-dependence of the shear viscosity to entropy density ratio in pure Yang-Mills theory and in QCD with light and strange quarks within kinetic theory in the relaxation time approximation. As effective degrees of freedom in a deconfined phase we consider quasiparticle excitations with quark and gluon quantum numbers and dispersion relations that depend explicitly on the temperature. The quasiparticle relaxation times are obtained by computing the microscopic two-body scattering amplitudes for the elementary scatterings among the quasiparticles. For pure Yang-Mills theory we show that the shear viscosity to entropy density ratio exhibits a characteristic non-monotonicity with a minimum at the first-order phase transition. In the presence of dynamical quarks the ratio smoothens while still exhibiting a minimum near confinement. Furthermore, there is a significant increase of the shear viscosity to entropy density ratio in QCD resulting from the quark contributions. This observation differs from previously reported estimates based on functional methods but is in line with perturbative QCD expectations at higher temperatures.

We extend the recently developed hybrid quark-meson-nucleon model by augmenting a six-point scalar interaction and investigate the consequences for neutron-star sequences in the mass-radius diagram. The model has the characteristic feature that, at increasing baryon density, the chiral symmetry is restored within the hadronic phase by lifting the mass splitting between chiral partner states (parity doubling), before quark deconfinement takes place. At low temperature and finite baryon density, the model predicts a first-, second-order chiral phase transition, or a crossover, depending on the expectation value of the scalar field, and a first-order deconfinement phase transition. We discuss two sets of free parameters, which result in compact-star mass-radius relations that are at tension with the combined constraints for maximum-mass ($2~M_\odot$) and the compactness (GW170817). We find that the most preferable mass-radius relations result in isospin-symmetric phase diagram with rather low temperature for the critical point of the chiral phase transition., Comment: published version. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1805.06886; text overlap with arXiv:1812.08250

Event-by-event fluctuations of the net-proton number studied in heavy-ion collisions provide an important means in the search for the conjectured critical end point (CP) in the QCD phase diagram. We propose a phenomenological model in which the fluctuations of the chiral critical mode couple to protons and anti-protons. This allows us to study the behavior of the net-proton number fluctuations in the presence of the CP. Calculating the net-proton number cumulants, $C_n$ with n=1,2,3,4, along the phenomenological freeze-out line we show that the ratio of variance and mean $C_2/C_1$, as well as kurtosis $C_4/C_2$ resemble qualitative properties observed in data in heavy-ion collisions as a function of beam energy obtained by the STAR Collaboration at RHIC. In particular, the non-monotonic structure of the kurtosis and smooth change of the $C_2/C_1$ ratio with beam energy could be due to the CP located near the freeze-out line. The skewness, however, exhibits properties that are in contrast to the criticality expected due to the CP. The dependence of our results on the model parameters and the proximity of the chemical freeze-out to the critical point are also discussed., Comment: 19 pages, 5 figures. Version accepted for publication in Journal of Physics G: Nuclear and Particle Physics

We study the Fourier coefficients b(k,T) of the net baryon number density in strongly interacting matter at finite temperature. We show that singularities in the complex chemical potential plane connected with phase transitions are reflected in the asymptotic behavior of the coefficients at large k. We derive the scaling properties of b(k,T) near a second order phase transition in the O(4) and Z(2) universality classes. The impact of first order and crossover transitions is also examined. The scaling properties of b(k,T) are linked to the QCD phase diagram in the temperature and complex chemical potential plane., Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures

Calculations and predictions are presented within the framework of the statistical hadronization model for transverse momentum spectra of the charmonium states J/$\psi$, $\psi(2S)$ and $X(3872)$ produced in nucleus-nucleus collisions at LHC energies. The results are confronted with available data and exhibit very good agreement by using particle flow profiles from state-of-the-art hydrodynamic calculations. For $X(3872)$ production in Pb-Pb collisions we predict a transverse momentum distribution similar in shape to that for J/$\psi$ with a strong enhancement at low transverse momenta and a production yield of about 1\% relative to that for J/$\psi$.

Recent lattice QCD studies at vanishing density exhibit the parity-doubling structure for the low-lying baryons around the chiral crossover temperature. This finding is likely an imprint of the chiral symmetry restoration in the baryonic sector of QCD, and is expected to occur also in cold dense matter, which makes it of major relevance for compact stars. By contrast, typical effective models for compact star matter embody chiral physics solely in the deconfined sector, with quarks as degrees of freedom. In this contribution, we present a description of QCD matter based on the effective hybrid quark-meson-nucleon model. Its characteristic feature is that, under neutron-star conditions, the chiral symmetry is restored in a first-order phase transition deep in the hadronic phase, before the deconfinement of quarks takes place. We discuss the implications of the parity doubling of baryons on the mass-radius relation for compact stars obtained in accordance with the modern constraints on the mass from PSR J0348+0432, the compactness from GW170817, as well as the direct URCA process threshold. We show that the existence of high-mass stars might not necessarily signal the deconfinement of quarks., Comment: prepared for the XIIIth Quark Confinement and the Hadron Spectrum Proceedings

We propose a resolution of the discrepancy between the proton yield predicted by the statistical hadronization approach and data on hadron production in ultra-relativistic nuclear collisions at the LHC. Applying the S-matrix formulation of statistical mechanics to include pion-nucleon interactions, we reexamine their contribution to the proton yield, taking resonance widths and the presence of nonresonant correlations into account. The effect of multi-pion-nucleon interactions is estimated using lattice QCD results on the baryon-charge susceptibility. We show that a consistent implementation of these features in the statistical hadronization model, leads to a reduction of the predicted proton yield, which then quantitatively matches data of the ALICE collaboration for Pb-Pb collisions at the LHC., Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, submitted to PLB

We investigate the Fourier coefficients $b_k(T)$ of the net--baryon number density in strongly interacting matter at nonzero temperature and density. The asymptotic behavior of the coefficients at large $k$ is determined by the singularities of the partition function in the complex chemical potential plane. Within a QCD-like effective chiral model, we show that the chiral and deconfinement properties at nonzero baryon chemical potential are reflected in characteristic $k$-- and $T$-- dependences of the Fourier coefficients. We also discuss the influence of the Roberge-Weiss transition on these coefficients. Our results indicate that the Fourier expansion approach can provide interesting insights into the criticality of QCD matter., Comment: 16 pages, 18 figures, text updated, published in Phys. Rev. D

We study the implications of the spontaneous and explicit Z(3) center symmetry breaking for the Polyakov loop susceptibilities. To this end, ratios of the susceptibilities of the real and imaginary parts, as well as of the modulus of the Polyakov loop are computed within an effective model using a color group integration scheme. We show that the essential features of the lattice QCD results of these ratios can be successfully captured by the effective approach. Furthermore we discuss a novel scaling relation in one of these ratios involving the explicit breaking field, volume, and temperature., Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, submitted to PRD

We investigate the fluctuations and correlations involving baryon number in hot hadronic matter with modified masses of negative-parity baryons, in the context of the hadron resonance gas. Temperature-dependent masses are adopted from the recent lattice QCD results and from a chiral effective model which implements the parity doubling structure with respect to the chiral symmetry. Confronting the baryon number susceptibility, baryon-charge correlation, and baryon-strangeness correlation and their ratios with the lattice QCD data, we show that the strong downward mass shift in hyperons can accidentally reproduce some correlation ratios, however it also tends to overshoot the individual fluctuations and correlations. This indicates, that in order to correctly account for the influence of the chiral symmetry restoration on the fluctuation observables, a consistent framework of in-medium effects beyond hadron mass shifts is required., Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures. To appear in Proceedings of Strangeness in Quark Matter 2017

We compute the correlation of the net baryon number with the electric charge ($\chi_{BQ}$) for an interacting hadron gas using the S-matrix formulation of statistical mechanics. The observable $\chi_{BQ}$ is particularly sensitive to the details of the pion-nucleon interaction, which are consistently incorporated in the current scheme via the empirical scattering phase shifts. Comparing to the recent lattice QCD studies in the $(2+1)$-flavor system, we find that the natural implementation of interactions and the proper treatment of resonances in the S-matrix approach lead to an improved description of the lattice data over that obtained in the hadron resonance gas model., Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, submitted to phys. lett. b

We study the relation between quark confinement and chiral symmetry breaking in QCD. Using lattice QCD formalism, we analytically express the various "confinement indicators", such as the Polyakov loop, its fluctuations, the Wilson loop, the inter-quark potential and the string tension, in terms of the Dirac eigenmodes. In the Dirac spectral representation, there appears a power of the Dirac eigenvalue $\lambda_n$ such as $\lambda_n^{N_t-1}$, which behaves as a reduction factor for small $\lambda_n$. Consequently, since this reduction factor cannot be cancelled, the low-lying Dirac eigenmodes give negligibly small contribution to the confinement quantities,while they are essential for chiral symmetry breaking. These relations indicate no direct, one-to-one correspondence between confinement and chiral symmetry breaking in QCD. In other words, there is some independence of quark confinement from chiral symmetry breaking, which can generally lead to different transition temperatures/densities for deconfinement and chiral restoration. We also investigate the Polyakov loop in terms of the eigenmodes of the Wilson, the clover and the domain-wall fermion kernels, respectively, and find the similar results. The independence of quark confinement from chiral symmetry breaking seems to be natural, because confinement is realized independently of quark masses and heavy quarks are also confined even without the chiral symmetry., Comment: 20 pages, 10 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1611.08742

We discuss the critical properties of net-baryon-number fluctuations at the chiral restoration transition in matter at nonzero temperature and net-baryon density. The chiral dynamics of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is modeled by the Polykov-loop extended Quark-Meson Lagrangian, that includes the coupling of quarks to temporal gauge fields. The Functional Renormalization Group is employed to account for the criticality at the phase boundary. We focus on the ratios of the net-baryon-number cumulants, $\chi_B^n$, for $1\leq n\leq 4$. The results are confronted with recent experimental data on fluctuations of the net-proton number in nucleus-nucleus collisions., Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, Proceedings CPOD2016, Wroclaw, Poland

We study the critical properties of net-baryon-number fluctuations at the chiral restoration transition in a medium at finite temperature and net baryon density. The chiral dynamics of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is modeled by the Polykov-loop extended Quark-Meson Lagrangian, that includes the coupling of quarks to vector meson and temporal gauge fields. The Functional Renormalization Group is employed to properly account for the $O(4)$ criticality at the phase boundary. We focus on the properties and systematics of ratios of the net-baryon-number cumulants $\chi_B^n$, for ${1\leq n\leq 6}$, near the phase boundary. The results are presented in the context of the recent experimental data of the STAR Collaboration on fluctuations of the net proton number in heavy ion collisions at RHIC. We show that the model results for the energy dependence of the cumulant ratios are in good overall agreement with the data, with one exception. At center-of-mass energies below ${19.6\;\mathrm{GeV}}$, we find that the measured fourth-order cumulant deviates considerably from the model results, which incorporate the expected $O(4)$ and $Z(2)$ criticality. We assess the influence of model assumptions and in particular of repulsive vector-interactions, which are used to modify the location of the critical endpoint in the model, on the cumulants ratios. Finally, we discuss a possibility to test to what extent the fluctuations are affected by nonequilibrium dynamics by comparing certain ratios of cumulants., Comment: 15 pages, 13 figures

We compare two approaches in modeling repulsive interactions among hadrons: the excluded volume approximation and the S-matrix formalism. These are applied to study the thermodynamics of the $\pi N \Delta$ system. It is shown that the introduction of an extraneous repulsion between pions and nucleons via the excluded volume approach, in addition to the interaction that generates the $\Delta$-resonance, is incompatible with the analysis based on the physical phase shift of pion-nucleon scattering in the $P_{33}$ channel. This finding suggests that the repulsive force between hadrons is interaction-channel dependent and is hence unlikely to be captured by a single phenomenological parameter. The S-matrix approach employed here can be used, however, to provide useful estimates of the magnitude of the effective eigenvolume., Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, submitted to phys. rev. c