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In the present work, we investigate the effects of dark matter (DM) on hybrid star properties. We assume that dark matter is mixed with both hadronic and quark matter and interacts with them through the exchange of a Higgs boson. The hybrid star properties are obtained from equations of state calculated with a Maxwell prescription. For the hadronic matter, we use the NL3* parameter set, and for the quark matter, the MIT bag model with a vector interaction. We see that dark matter does not influence the phase transition points (pressure and chemical potential) but shifts the discontinuity on the energy density, which ultimately reduces the minimum mass star that contains a quark core. Moreover, it changes considerably the star family mass-radius diagrams and moves the merger polarizability curves inside the confidence lines. Another interesting feature is the influence of DM in the quark core of the hybrid stars constructed. Our results show an increase of the core radius for higher values of the dark particle Fermi momentum.

Thermal field theory is indispensable for describing hot and dense systems. Yet in practice perturbative calculations are stymied by a host of energy scales, and often converge slowly. Meaning that precise calculations demand the apt use of effective field theories. In this paper we refine the effective description of slowly varying gauge field. We match this effective theory, known as hard thermal loops, to the full theory at the two-loop level. The results apply for any renormalizable model with generic chemical potentials for fermions. We also discuss how to consistently define asymptotic masses at higher orders; and how to treat spectral densities close to the light-cone. In particular, we demonstrate that the gluon mass is renormalization-scale and gauge independent to next-to-leading order.

Astronomische Nachrichten 342(5), 715 - 726 (2021). doi:10.1002/asna.202113988, We review the properties of the strongly interacting quark-gluon plasma (QGP) at finite temperature and baryon chemical potential as created in heavy-ion collisions at ultrarelativistic energies. The description of the strongly interacting (non-perturbative) QGP in equilibrium is based on the effective propagators and couplings from the Dynamical QuasiParticle Model (DQPM) that is matched to reproduce the equation-of-state of the partonic system above the deconfinement temperature from lattice QCD. Based on a microscopic transport description of heavy-ion collisions, we discuss which observables are sensitive to the QGP creation and its properties., Published by Wiley-VCH Verl., Berlin

We use holography to derive effective theories of fluctuations in spontaneously broken phases of systems with finite temperature, chemical potential, magnetic field and momentum relaxation in which the order parameters break translations. We analytically construct the hydrodynamic modes corresponding to the coupled thermoelectric and density wave fluctuations and all of them turn out to be purely diffusive for our system. Upon introducing pinning for the density waves, some of these modes acquire not only a gap, but also a finite resonance due to the magnetic field. Finally, we study the optical properties and perform numerical checks of our analytical results. A crucial byproduct of our analysis is the identification of the correct current which describes the transport of heat in our system., Comment: 50 pages, 4 figures; v2: references added; v3 added panel in figure 2 and minor comments, added references, published version

We perform an extensive study of the correlations between the neutrino-nucleon inverse mean free paths (IMFPs) and the underlying equation of states (EoSs). Strong interaction uncertainties in the neutrino mean free path are investigated in different density regimes. The nucleon effective mass, the nucleon chemical potentials, and the residual interactions in the medium play an important role in determining neutrino-nucleon interactions in a density-dependent manner. We study how the above quantities are constrained by an EoS consistent with (i) nuclear mass measurements, (ii) proton-proton scattering phase shifts, and (iii) neutron star observations. We then study the uncertainties of both the charged current and the neutral current neutrino-nucleon inverse mean free paths due to the variation of these quantities, using Hartree-Fock+random phase approximation method. Finally, we calculate the Pearson correlation coefficients between (i) the EoS-based quantities and the EoS-based quantities; (ii) the EoS-based quantities and the IMFPs; (iii) the IMFPs and the IMFPs. We find a strong impact of residual interactions on neutrino opacity in the spin and spin-isospin channels, which are not well constrained by current nuclear modelings., Change the figure styles; correct several typos in text; accepted by PRC

We extend the effective dynamical quasiparticle model (DQPM) - constructed for the description of non-perturbative QCD phenomena of the strongly interacting quark-gluon plasma (QGP) - to large baryon chemical potentials, $\mu_B$, including a critical end-point and a 1st order phase transition. The DQPM description of quarks and gluons is based on partonic propagators with complex selfenergies where the real part of the selfenergies is related to the quasiparticle mass and the imaginary part to a finite width of their spectral functions. In DQPM the determination of complex selfenergies for the partonic degrees of freedom at zero and finite $\mu_B$ has been performed by adjusting the entropy density to the lQCD data. The temperature-dependent effective coupling (squared) $g^2(T/T_c)$, as well as the parton effective masses and widths are based on this adjustment. The novel extended dynamical quasiparticle model, named "DQPM-CP", makes it possible to describe thermodynamical and transport properties of quarks and gluons in a wide range of $T$ and $\mu_B$, and reproduces the equation-of-state (EoS) of lQCD calculations in the crossover region of finite $T, \mu_B$. We apply a scaling ansatz for the strong coupling constant near the CEP, located at ($T^{CEP}$, $\mu^{CEP}_B) = (0.100, 0.960)$ GeV. We show the EoS as well as the speed of sound for $T>T_c$ and for a wide range of $\mu_B$, which can be of interest for hydrodynamical simulations. Furthermore, we consider two settings for the strange quark chemical potentials (I) $\mu_s=\mu_B/3$ and (II) $\mu_s=0$. The isentropic trajectories of the QGP matter are compared for these two cases. The phase diagram of DQPM-CP is close to PNJL calculations. The leading order pQCD transport coefficients of both approaches differ. This elucidates that the knowledge of the phase diagram alone is not sufficient to describe the dynamical evolution of QGP., Comment: 18 pages, 17 figures

Neutrino oscillations and mean-field effects considerably enrich the phenomenology of neutrino evolution in the early Universe. Taking into account these effects, most notably the neutrino self-interaction mean-field contribution, we revisit the problem of the evolution of primordial neutrino asymmetries including for the first time the complete expression for collisions, which describe scattering and annihilations with electrons/positrons and reactions among (anti)neutrinos. We show that a generalisation of the adiabatic transfer of averaged oscillations (ATAO) scheme, a numerical method previously developed without neutrino degeneracy and based on the large separation of time scales in this problem, is sufficient to reach the same accuracy as the full quantum kinetic equation integration, but is notably faster. This approximation highlights the physics of synchronous oscillations at play in the evolution of neutrino chemical potentials, especially in the particular case with only two-neutrino mixing. In particular, it allows to understand what controls the beginning and the amplitude of oscillations, but also why there is a subsequent regime of collective oscillations with larger frequencies. We also find that it is very important to use the full collision term instead of relying on damping-like approximations, in order not to overestimate how collisions reduce these synchronous oscillations. Finally we study qualitatively how mixing parameters affect the final neutrino configuration, and in particular we show that the CP-violating Dirac phase cannot substantially affect the final $N_{\rm eff}$ nor the final electronic (anti)-neutrino spectrum, and thus should not affect cosmological observables., 51 pages, 17 figures

International audience; We compare the phase diagram for vanishing chemical potential of the recently advanced version of the PNJL approach with that of the standard (P)NJL approaches.

The Logarithmic Linear Relaxation (LLR) algorithm is an efficient method for computing densities of states for systems with a continuous spectrum. A key feature of this method is exponential error reduction, which allows us to evaluate the density of states of a system over hundreds of thousands of orders of magnitude with a fixed level of relative accuracy. As a consequence of exponential error reduction, the LLR method provides a robust alternative to traditional Monte Carlo calculations in cases in which states suppressed by the Boltzmann weight play nevertheless a relevant role, e.g., as transition regions between dominant configuration sets. After reviewing the algorithm, we will show an application in U(1) Lattice Gauge Theory that has enabled us to obtain the most accurate estimate of the critical coupling with modest computational resources, defeating exponential tunneling times between metastable vacua. As a further showcase, we will then present an application of the LLR method to the decorrelation of the topological charge in SU(3) Lattice Gauge Theory near the continuum limit. Finally, we will review in general applications of the LLR algorithm to systems affected by a strong sign problem and discuss the case of the Bose gas at finite chemical potential., 6 pages, 3 figures. Talk presented by B. Lucini at the XXXII IUPAP Conference on Computational Physics 21, Coventry, UK, 1-5 August 2021

The hadron resonance gas (HRG) model and its extensions are often used to describe the hadronic phase of strongly interacting matter. In our work we use lattice-QCD simulations with temporal extents of $N_\tau=8,10$ and $12$ to quantify corrections to the ideal HRG. Firstly, we determine a number of subleading fugacity expansion coefficients of the QCD free energy via a two-dimensional scan on the imaginary baryon number chemical potential ($\mu_B$) - strangeness chemical potential ($\mu_S$) plane. Using the aforementioned coefficients, we also extrapolate ratios of baryon number and strangeness fluctuations and correlations to finite chemical potentials via a truncated fugacity expansion. Our results extrapolated along the crossover line $T_\mathrm{c}(\mu_B)$ at strangeness neutrality are able to reproduce trends of experimental net-proton fluctuations measured by the STAR Collaboration., Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, Contribution to the 38th International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory, LATTICE2021 26th-30th July, 2021

The Taylor expansion approach to the equation of state of QCD at finite chemical potential struggles to reach large chemical potential μB. This is primarily due to the intrinsic diffculty in precisely determining higher order Taylor coefficients, as well as the structure of the temperature dependence of such observables. In these proceedings, we illustrate a novel scheme [1] that allows us to extrapolate the equation of state of QCD without suffering from the poor convergence typical of the Taylor expansion approach. We continuum extrapolate the coefficients of our new expansion scheme and show the thermodynamic observables up to μB/T ≤ 3.5.

The hadron resonance gas (HRG) model is often believed to correctly describe the confined phase of QCD. This assumption is the basis of many phenomenological works on QCD thermodynamics and of the analysis of hadron yields in relativistic heavy ion collisions. We use first-principle lattice simulations to calculate corrections to the ideal HRG. Namely, we determine the sub-leading fugacity expansion coefficients of the grand canonical free energy, receiving contributions from processes like kaon-kaon or baryon-baryon scattering. We achieve this goal by performing a two dimensional scan on the imaginary baryon number chemical potential ($\mu_B$) - strangeness chemical potential ($\mu_S$) plane, where the fugacity expansion coefficients become Fourier coefficients. We carry out a continuum limit estimation of these coefficients by performing lattice simulations with temporal extents of $N_\tau=8,10,12$ using the 4stout-improved staggered action. We then use the truncated fugacity expansion to extrapolate ratios of baryon number and strangeness fluctuations and correlations to finite chemical potentials. Evaluating the fugacity expansion along the crossover line, we reproduce the trend seen in the experimental data on net-proton fluctuations by the STAR collaboration., Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures

In recent years there has been much progress on the investigation of the QCD phase diagram with lattice QCD simulations. In this review I focus on the developments in the last two years. Especially the addition of external influences or new parameter ranges yield an increasing number of interesting results. I discuss the progress for small, finite densities from both analytical continuation and Complex Langevin simulations, for heavy quark bound states (quarkonium), the dependence on the quark masses (Columbia plot) and the influence of a magnetic field. Many of these conditions are relevant for the understanding of both the QCD transition in the early universe and heavy ion collision experiments which are conducted for example at the LHC and RHIC., 59 pages, 31 figures

We calculate two transport coefficients -- the shear viscosity over entropy ratio $\eta/s$ and the ratio of the electric conductivity to the temperature $\sigma_0/T$ -- of strongly interacting quark matter within the extended $N_f=3$ Polyakov Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (PNJL) model along the crossover transition line for moderate values of baryon chemical potential $0 \leq \mu_B \leq 0.9$ GeV as well as in the vicinity of the critical endpoint (CEP) and at large baryon chemical potential $\mu_B=1.2$ GeV, where the first-order phase transition takes place. The evaluation of the transport coefficients is performed on the basis of the effective Boltzmann equation in the relaxation time approximation. We employ two different methods for the calculation of the quark relaxation times: i) using the averaged transition rate defined via thermal averaged quark-quark and quark-antiquark PNJL cross sections and ii) using the 'weighted' thermal averaged quark-quark and quark-antiquark PNJL cross sections. The $\eta/s$ and $\sigma_0/T$ transport coefficients have a similar temperature and chemical potential behavior when approaching the chiral phase transition for the both methods for the quark relaxation time, however, the differences grow with increasing temperature. We demonstrate the effect of the first-order phase transition and of the CEP on the transport coefficients in the deconfined QCD medium., Comment: 16 pages, 21 figures, 4 tables

SISSA 1-54 (2020). doi:10.1007/JHEP02(2021)068, At finite density, the spontaneous breakdown of an internal non-Abelian symmetry dictates, along with gapless modes, modes whose gap is fixed by the algebra and proportional to the chemical potential: the gapped Goldstones. Generically the gap of these states is comparable to that of other non-universal excitations or to the energy scale where the dynamics is strongly coupled. This makes it non-straightforward to derive a universal effective field theory (EFT) description realizing all the symmetries. Focusing on the illustrative example of a fully broken SU(2) group, we demonstrate that such an EFT can be constructed by carving out around the Goldstones, gapless and gapped, at small 3-momentum. The rules governing the EFT, where the gapless Goldstones are soft while the gapped ones are slow, are those of standard nonrelativistic EFTs, like for instance nonrelativistic QED. In particular, the EFT Lagrangian formally preserves gapped Goldstone number, and processes where such number is not conserved are described inclusively by allowing for imaginary parts in the Wilson coefficients. Thus, while the symmetry is manifestly realized in the EFT, unitarity is not. We comment on the application of our construction to the study of the large charge sector of conformal field theories with non-Abelian symmetries., Published by SISSA

The 38th International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory, LATTICE2021, Zoom/Gather@Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, 26 Jul 2021 - 30 Jul 2021; Proceedings of Science / International School for Advanced Studies (LATTICE2021), 377 (2021). doi:10.22323/1.396.0377, Many electromagnetic properties of graphene can be described by the Hubbard model on a honeycomb lattice. However, this system suffers strongly from the sign problem if a chemical potential is included.Tensor network methods are not affected by this problem. We use the imaginary time evolution of a fermionic projected entangled pair state, which allows to simulate both parity sectors independently. Incorporating the fermionic nature on the level of the tensor network allows to fix the particle number to be either even or odd. This way we can access the states at half filling and with one additional electron. We calculate the energy and other observables of both states, which was not possible before with Monte Carlo methods., Published by SISSA, Trieste

Physical review letters 126(20), 201802 (2021). doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.126.201802, We present a leptogenesis mechanism based on the standard type-I seesaw model that successfully operates at right-handed-neutrino masses as low as a few 100 TeV. This mechanism, which we dub 'wash-in leptogenesis', does not require any CP violation in the neutrino sector and can be implemented even in the regime of strong wash-out. The key idea behind wash-in leptogenesis is to generalize standard freeze-out leptogenesis to a nonminimal cosmological background in which the chemical potentials of all particles not in chemical equilibrium at the temperature of leptogenesis are allowed to take arbitrary values. This sets the stage for building a plethora of new baryogenesis models where chemical potentials generated at high temperatures are reprocessed to generate a nonvanishing B-L asymmetry at low temperatures. As concrete examples, we discuss wash-in leptogenesis after axion inflation and in the context of grand unification., Published by APS, College Park, Md.

Physical review / D 104(9), 094515 (2021). doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.104.094515, We investigate the Kondo effect with Wilson fermions. This is based on a mean-field approach for the chiral Gross-Neveu model including four-point interactions between a light Wilson fermion and a heavy fermion. For massless Wilson fermions, we demonstrate the appearance of the Kondo effect. We point out that there is a coexistence phase with both the light-fermion scalar condensate and Kondo condensate, and the critical chemical potentials of the scalar condensate are shifted by the Kondo effect. For negative-mass Wilson fermions, we find that the Kondo effect is favored near the parameter region realizing the Aoki phase. Our findings will be useful for understanding the roles of heavy impurities in Dirac semimetals, topological insulators, and lattice simulations., Published by Inst., Melville, NY

Physical review / D 104(3), 034504 (2021). doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.104.034504, Quantum technologies offer the prospect to efficiently simulate sign-problem afflicted regimes in lattice field theory, such as the presence of topological terms, chemical potentials, and out-of-equilibrium dynamics. In this work, we derive the 3+1D topological $\theta$-term for Abelian and non-Abelian lattice gauge theories in the Hamiltonian formulation, paving the way towards Hamiltonian-based simulations of such terms on quantum and classical computers. We further study numerically the zero-temperature phase structure of a 3+1D U(1) lattice gauge theory with the $\theta$-term via exact diagonalization for a single periodic cube. In the strong coupling regime, our results suggest the occurrence of a phase transition at constant values of $\theta$, as indicated by an avoided level-crossing and abrupt changes in the plaquette expectation value, the electric energy density, and the topological charge density. These results could in principle be cross-checked by the recently developed 3+1D tensor network methods and quantum simulations, once sufficient resources become available., Published by Inst., Melville, NY

Physical review / B 104(15), 155118 (2021). doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.104.155118, Tensor networks are a powerful tool to simulate a variety of different physical models, including those that suffer from the sign problem in Monte Carlo simulations. The Hubbard model on the honeycomb lattice with non-zero chemical potential is one such problem. Our method is based on projected entangled pair states (PEPS) using imaginary time evolution. We demonstrate that it provides accurate estimators for the ground state of the model, including cases where Monte Carlo simulations fail miserably. In particular it shows near to optimal, that is linear, scaling in lattice size. We also present a novel approach to directly simulate the subspace with an odd number of fermions. It allows to independently determine the ground state in both sectors. Without a chemical potential this corresponds to half filling and the lowest energy state with one additional electron or hole. We identify several stability issues, such as degenerate ground states and large single particle gaps, and provide possible fixes., Published by Inst., Woodbury, NY

International audience; The (Polyakov) Nambu‐ Jona‐Lasinio (PNJL) approach is an effective theory for low energies which shares with Quantumchromodynamics (QCD) the global symmetries. This approach is easy to handle and allows for analytical results for many of the observables which are of interest for the studies of ultrarelativistic heavy‐ion collisions but also for the merger and collisions of neutron stars. It allows in particular to study the density and temperature dependence of quark masses and of the masses of mesons and baryons as well as the chiral phase transition. In recent times, this transition came in the focus of interest because it is expected that the upcoming experiments at the Fair (Germany) and NICA (Russia) facilities will observe a Quark‐Gluon‐Plasma (QGP) at finite baryon chemical potential. In this contribution, we show that the extended PNJL model is able to describe the properties of symmetric matter at vanishing chemical potential, as determined by lQCD calculations.

By measuring the momentum correlations of pions created in heavy-ion collisions we can gain information about the space-time geometry of the particle emitting source. Recent experimental results from multiple different collaborations demonstrated that to properly describe the shape of the measured correlation functions, one needs to go beyond the Gaussian approximation. Some studies suggest that the Levy distribution could provide a good description of the source. While there are already many experimental results, there is very little input from the phenomenology side in explanation of the observed non-Gaussian source shapes. The EPOS model is a sophisticated hybrid model where the evolution of the newly-created system is governed by Parton-Based Gribov-Regge theory. It has already proved to be successful in describing many different experimental observations for the systems characterized by baryon chemical potential close to zero, but so far the source shape has not been explored in detail. In this paper we discuss studies of the pion emitting source based on the theoretical approach of the EPOS model., Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, Summer XLVI-th IEEE-SPIE Joint Symposium Wilga 2020 - conference proceedings

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

Physical review / D 102(9), 094510 (1-21) (2020). doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.102.094510, We study the dependence of the electric conductivity on chemical potential in finite-density SU(2) gauge theory with Nf=2 flavors of rooted staggered sea quarks, in combination with Wilson-Dirac and domain-wall valence quarks. The pion mass is reasonably small with mπ/mρ≈0.4. We concentrate in particular on the vicinity of the chiral crossover, where we find the low-frequency electric conductivity to be most sensitive to small changes in fermion density. Working in the low-density QCD-like regime with spontaneously broken chiral symmetry, we obtain an estimate of the first nontrivial coefficient c(T) of the expansion of conductivity σ(T,μ)=σ(T,0)(1+c(T)(μ/T)2+O(μ4)) in powers of μ, which has rather weak temperature dependence and takes its maximal value c(T)≈0.10±0.07 around the critical temperature. At larger densities and lower temperatures, the conductivity quickly grows toward the diquark condensation phase and also becomes closer to the free-quark result. As a by-product of our study we confirm the conclusions of previous studies with heavier pion that for SU(2) gauge theory the ratio of crossover temperature to pion mass Tc/mπ≈0.4 at μ=0 is significantly smaller than in real QCD., Published by Inst., Melville, NY

The supersymmetric R\'enyi entropy across a spherical entangling surface in a $d$-dimensional SCFT with flavor defects is equivalent to a supersymmetric partition function on $\mathbb{H}^{d-1} \times \mathbb{S}^1$, which can be computed exactly using localization. We consider the holographically dual BPS solutions in $(d +1)$-dimensional matter coupled supergravity $(d = 3 , 5)$, which are charged hyperbolically sliced AdS black holes. We compute the renormalized on-shell action and the holographic supersymmetric R\'enyi entropy and show a perfect match with the field theory side. Our setup allows a direct map between the chemical potentials for the global symmetries of the field theories and those of the gravity solutions. We also discuss a simple case where angular momentum is added., Comment: 43 pages

We extend the SU(3) (Polyakov)–Nambu–Jona-Lasinio in two ways: We introduce the next-to-leading-order contribution (in Nc) in the partition function. This contribution contains explicit mesonic terms. We introduce a coupling between the gluon field and the quark degrees of freedom, which goes beyond a simple rescaling of the critical temperature. With both these improvements, we can reproduce, for vanishing chemical potentials, the lattice results for the thermal properties of a strongly interacting system like pressure, energy density, entropy density, interaction measure, and the speed of sound. Also, the expansion parameter toward small but finite chemical potentials agrees with the lattice results. Extending the calculations to finite chemical potentials (which does not require any new parameter), we find a first-order phase transition up to a critical end point of TCEP=110MeV and μq=320MeV. We calculate the mass of mesons and baryons as a function of temperature and chemical potential and the transition between the hadronic and the chirally restored phase. These calculations provide an equation of state in the whole T,μ plane an essential ingredient for dynamical calculations of ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions but also for the physics of neutron stars and neutron star collisions.

Lattice simulations of the QCD correlation functions in the Landau gauge have established two remarkable facts. First, the coupling constant in the gauge sector remains finite and moderate at all scales, suggesting that some kind of perturbative description should be valid down to infrared momenta. Second, the gluon propagator reaches a finite nonzero value at vanishing momentum, corresponding to a gluon screening mass. We review recent studies which aim at describing the long-distance properties of Landau gauge QCD by means of the perturbative Curci-Ferrari model. The latter is the simplest deformation of the Faddeev-Popov Lagrangian in the Landau gauge that includes a gluon screening mass at tree-level. There are, by now, strong evidences that this approach successfully describes many aspects of the infrared QCD dynamics. In particular, several correlation functions were computed at one- and two-loop orders and compared with {\it ab-initio} lattice simulations. The typical error is of the order of ten percent for a one-loop calculation and drops to few percents at two loops. We review such calculations in the quenched approximation as well as in the presence of dynamical quarks. In the latter case, the spontaneous breaking of the chiral symmetry requires to go beyond a coupling expansion but can still be described in a controlled approximation scheme in terms of small parameters. We also review applications of the approach to nonzero temperature and chemical potential., Comment: 51 pages, 29 figures

We construct a family of equations of state for QCD in the temperature range 30 MeV $\leq T\leq$ 800 MeV and in the chemical potential range $0\leq \mu_B \leq$ 450 MeV. These equations of state match available lattice QCD results up to $\mathcal{O}(\mu_B^4)$ and in each of them we place a critical point in the 3D Ising model universality class. The position of this critical point can be chosen in the range of chemical potentials covered by the second Beam Energy Scan at RHIC. We discuss possible choices for the free parameters, which arise from mapping the Ising model onto QCD. Our results for the pressure, entropy density, baryon density, energy density and speed of sound can be used as inputs in the hydrodynamical simulations of the fireball created in heavy ion collisions. We also show our result for the second cumulant of the baryon number in thermal equilibrium, displaying its divergence at the critical point. In the future, comparisons between RHIC data and the output of the hydrodynamic simulations, including calculations of fluctuation observables, built upon the model equations of state that we have constructed may be used to locate the critical point in the QCD phase diagram, if there is one to be found., Comment: 39 pages, 18 figures, 2 tables, version published in Phys.Rev.C

Nonperturbative equations of state (EoSs) for two and three quark flavors are constructed with the functional renormalization group (FRG) within a quark-meson model truncation augmented by vector mesons for low temperature and high density. Based on previous FRG studies without repulsive vector meson interactions the influence of isoscalar vector $\omega$- and $\phi$-mesons on the dynamical fluctuations of quarks and (pseudo)scalar mesons is investigated. The grand potential as well as vector meson condensates are evaluated as a function of quark chemical potential and the quark matter EoS in $\beta$-equilibrium is applied to neutron star (NS) physics. The tidal deformability and mass-radius relations for hybrid stars from combined hadronic and quark matter EoSs are compared for different vector couplings. We observe a significant impact of the vector mesons on the quark matter EoS such that the resulting EoS is sufficiently stiff to support two-solar-mass neutron stars., Comment: 20 pages, 7 figures, 1 table; to appear in EPJ ST Special Issue: Strong Correlations in Dense Matter Physics

We evaluate the finite temperature scalar sunset diagram with imaginary square masses, that appears in the Gribov-Zwanziger approach to Yang-Mills (YM) theory beyond one-loop order. Since YM theory at finite temperature is governed by center-symmetry and the Polyakov loop, we also include the possibility of a constant temporal background gauge field in the form of color-dependent imaginary chemical potentials., Comment: 41 pages, 1 figure

International audience; The presence of exotic hadrons, such as hyperons and Δ isobars, in the dense nuclear matter in their cores has been shown to produce important changes in the properties of neutron stars. Within the quark-meson coupling model, we show that the many-body forces generated by the change in the internal quark structure of the baryons in the strong scalar mean fields generated in dense nuclear matter prohibit the appearance of Δ isobars.

We initiate a systematic, non-perturbative study of the large-$N$ expansion in the two-dimensional $\text{SU}(N)\times \text{SU}(N)$ Principal Chiral Model (PCM). Starting with the known infinite-$N$ solution for the ground state at fixed chemical potential \cite{Fateev:1994dp,Fateev:1994ai}, we devise an iterative procedure to solve the Bethe ansatz equations order by order in $1/N$. The first few orders, which we explicitly compute, reveal a systematic enhancement pattern at strong coupling calling for the near-threshold resummation of the large-$N$ expansion. The resulting double-scaling limit bears striking similarities to the $c=1$ non-critical string theory and suggests that the double-scaled PCM is dual to a non-critical string with a $(2+1)$-dimensional target space where an additional dimension emerges dynamically from the $\text{SU}(N)$ Dynkin diagram., 6 pages, 1 figure, v2: typos fixed, minor corrections

International audience; We summarize recent progress in describing fundamental properties of QCD at finite temperature and finite (baryonic) chemical potential using the Curci-Ferrari model, a proposal for gauge-fixing in the Landau gauge beyond the standard Faddeev-Popov construction.

We investigate the edge effects on the finite temperature fermionic condensate (FC) for a massive fermionic field in a (2+1)-dimensional conical spacetime with a magnetic flux located at the cone apex. The field obeys the bag boundary condition on a circle concentric with the apex. The analysis is presented for both the fields realizing two irreducible representations of the Clifford algebra and for general case of the chemical potential. In both the regions outside and inside the circular boundary, the FC is decomposed into the boundary-free and boundary-induced contributions. They are periodic functions of the magnetic flux with the period equal to the flux quantum and even functions under the simultaneous change of the signs for the magentic flux and the chemical potential. The dependence of the FC on the magnetic flux becomes weaker with decreasing planar angle deficit. For points near the boundary, the effects of finite temperature, of planar angle deficit and of magnetic flux are weak. For a fixed distance from the boundary and at high temperatures the FC is dominated by the Minkowskian part. The FC in parity and time-reversal symmetric (2+1)-dimensional fermionic models is discussed and applications are given to graphitic cones., Version accepted for publication in PRD. 28 pages, 6 figures

The aim of this work is to shed light to some less known aspects of Polyakov-loop extended chiral models, especially on the correlation of the quark sector and the Polyakov loop. We show that the order of chiral and Polyakov-loop transition and their difference in temperature as seen in LQCD calculations could be realised with a critical scale of the Polyakov-loop potential larger than the one in pure gauge theory. Comparing results for the Polyakov-loop susceptibility with the self-consistent medium-dependent quark mass and keeping the later at a fixed value allows to disentangle chiral-symmetry restoration and center-symmetry breaking effects. This indicates a confined chirally restored phase which is also seen as a plateau in the quark contribution to thermodynamics and by sigma and pion spectral functions that coincide but have a small width. Furthermore, we discuss that from some large chemical potential on the explicit center symmetry breaking is so strong that statistical deconfinement is realised at infinitely small temperatures. Both, the missing sensitivity of the Polyakov-loop to the quark mass except close to the chiral transition and the Polyakov loop being zero at zero temperature at all chemical potentials it is interpreted as an indication of a missing mechanism to take into account the quark back-reaction on the Polyakov loop.

The QCD transition from a hadronic to a quark-gluon plasma phase is a cross-over at vanishing/small baryo-chemical potential, while at higher chemical potentials it is argued that it becomes of first order, ending with a critical end-point. The present goal is the determination of the critical line and, possibly, the recognition of the critical endpoint. For this purpose, the effective model (Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model with Polyakov Loop) with 2+1 flavours is used. In Mean Field Approximation it is possible to obtain all thermodynamic quantities (pressure, entropy, energy and quark density) and their fluctuations, in particular, the generalized quark-number susceptibilities. We use the net baryon-number fluctuations and net-strangeness fluctuations to identify the critical line and the order of the phase transition in the chemical potential - temperature plane., 5 pages, 4 figures, Proceedings of Fairness 2019

We revisit the decoupling of neutrinos in the early universe with flavour oscillations. We rederive the quantum kinetic equations which determine the neutrino evolution based on a BBGKY-like hierarchy, and include for the first time the full collision term, with both on- and off-diagonal terms for all relevant reactions. We focus on the case of zero chemical potential and solve these equations numerically. We also develop an approximate scheme based on the adiabatic evolution in the matter basis. In fact, the large difference between the oscillations and cosmological time scales allows to consider averaged flavour oscillations which can speed up the numerical integration by two orders of magnitude, when combined with a direct computation of the differential system Jacobian. The approximate numerical scheme is also useful to gain more insight into the physics of neutrino decoupling. Including the most recent results on plasma thermodynamics QED corrections, we update the effective number of neutrinos to $N_{\mathrm{eff}} = 3.0440$. Finally we study the impact of flavour oscillations during neutrino decoupling on the subsequent primordial nucleosynthesis., Comment: 38 pages, 6 figures, v2: appendix discussing the effect of a CP phase. Version published in JCAP

In a recent work, a contribution to the Nernst current of a Dirac or Weyl semimetal coming from the conformal anomaly was reported. Being originated from an anomaly - a vacuum contribution -, a non-zero transport coefficient was predicted at zero temperature and chemical potential. In this work we perform a Kubo formula calculation of the thermoelectrical coefficient and confirm that the result agrees with the quantum field theory estimation in the limit of zero temperature and chemical potential. For finite chemical potential {\mu} around {\mu} = 0 the transverse Seebeck coefficient shows a plateau indicating that only the zero conformal Landau levels contributes to this intrinsic effect. This result opens the way to the experimental observation of a geometric anomaly which is much harder to explore than the standard chiral anomaly., Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures

Multi-messenger observations of neutron star (NS) mergers have the potential to revolutionize nuclear astrophysics. They will improve our understanding of nucleosynthesis, provide insights about the equation of state (EOS) of strongly-interacting matter at high densities, and enable tests of the theory of gravity and of dark matter. Here, we focus on the EOS, where both gravitational waves (GWs) from neutron-star mergers and X-ray observations from space-based detectors such as NICER will provide more stringent constraints on the structure of neutron stars. Furthermore, recent advances in nuclear theory have enabled reliable calculations of the EOS at low densities using effective field theory based Hamiltonians and advanced techniques to solve the quantum many-body problem. In this paper, we address how the first observation of GWs from GW170817 can be combined with modern calculations of the EOS to extract useful insights about the EOS of matter encountered inside neutron stars. We analyze the impact of various uncertainties, the role of phase transitions in the NS core, and discuss how future observations will improve our understanding of dense matter., 18 pages, 10 figures, published version; Invited contribution prepared for the EPJ A Topical Issue "First joint gravitational wave and electromagnetic observations: Implications for nuclear and particle physics."

We determine chemical freeze-out conditions from strangeness observables measured at RHIC beam energies. Based on a combined analysis of lowest-order net-kaon fluctuations and strange anti-baryon over baryon yield ratios we obtain visibly enhanced freeze-out conditions at high beam energies compared to previous studies which analyzed net-proton and net-charge fluctuations. Our findings are in qualitative agreement with the recent study (Bellwied et al. in arXiv:1805.00088 [hep-ph], 2018) which utilizes the net-kaon fluctuation data in combination with information from lattice QCD. Our complementary approach shows that also strange hadron yield ratios are described by such enhanced freeze-out conditions.

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

We use an expansion in angular mode functions in order to solve the Boltzmann equation for a gluon plasma undergoing longitudinal expansion. By comparing with the exact solution obtained numerically by other means we show that the expansion in mode functions converges rapidly for all cases of practical interest, and represents a substantial gain in numerical effort as compared to more standard methods. We contrast the cases of a non expanding plasma and of longitudinally expanding plasmas, and follow in both cases the evolutions towards thermalization. In the latter case, we observe that, although the spherical mode function appears to be well reproduced after some time by a local equilibrium distribution function depending on slowly varying temperature and chemical potential, thereby suggesting thermalization of the system, the longitudinal and transverse pressures take more time to equilibrate. This is because the expansion hinders the relaxation of the first angular mode function. This feature was also observed in a simpler context where the Boltzmann equation is solved in terms of special moments within the relaxation time approximation, and attributed there to the particular coupling between the first two moments of the distribution function. The present analysis confirms this observation in a more realistic setting., 23 pages, 16 figures, version published in Nuclear Physics A

The chemical freeze-out irregularities found with the most advanced hadron resonance gas model and possible signals of two QCD phase transitions are discussed. We found that the center-of-mass collision energy range of tricritical endpoint of QCD phase diagram is [9; 9.2] GeV which is consistent both with QCD inspired exactly solvable model and with experimental findings., Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures

International audience; The (Polyakov) Nambu–Jona‐Lasinio approach is an effective theory for low energies, which shares with Quantumchromodynamics the global symmetries. This approach is easy to handle and allows for analytical results for many of the observables that are of interest for the studies of ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions but also for the merger and collisions of neutron stars. It allows in particular to study the density and temperature dependence of quark masses and of the masses of mesons and baryons as well as the chiral phase transition. In recent times, this transition came in the focus of interest because it is expected that the upcoming experiments at the Fair (Germany) and Nuclotron‐based Ion Collider fAcility (Russia) facilities will observe a Quark‐Gluon‐Plasma at finite baryon chemical potential.

We construct a family of equations of state for QCD in the temperature range 30 MeV $\leq T\leq$ 800 MeV and in the chemical potential range $0\leq \mu_B \leq$ 450 MeV. The equations of state match available lattice QCD results up to $\mathcal{O}(\mu_B^4)$ and in each of them we place a critical point in the 3D Ising model universality class. The position of this critical point can be chosen in the range of chemical potentials covered by the second Beam Energy Scan at RHIC. We discuss possible choices for the free parameters, which arise from the mapping of the Ising model onto QCD. Our results for the pressure, entropy density, baryon density, energy density and speed of sound can be used as inputs in the hydrodynamical simulations of the fireball created in heavy ion collisions. We also show our result for the second cumulant of the baryon number in thermal equilibrium, displaying its divergence at the critical point. In the future, comparisons between RHIC data and the output of the hydrodynamic simulations, including calculations of fluctuation observables, built upon the model equations of state that we have constructed may be used to locate the critical point in the QCD phase diagram, if there is one to be found.

We extend a previous investigation of the QCD phase diagram with heavy quarks in the context of background field methods by including the two-loop corrections to the background field effective potential. The nonperturbative dynamics in the pure-gauge sector is modeled by a phenomenological gluon mass term in the Landau-DeWitt gauge-fixed action, which results in an improved perturbative expansion. We investigate the phase diagram at nonzero temperature and (real or imaginary) chemical potential. Two-loop corrections yield an improved agreement with lattice data as compared to the leading-order results. We also compare with the results of nonperturbative approaches. We further study the equation of state as well as the thermodynamic stability of the system at two-loop order. Finally, we show, using simple thermodynamic arguments, that the behavior of the Polyakov loops as functions of the chemical potential complies with their interpretation in terms of quark and anti-quark free energies., 26 pages, 16 figures

We present the latest results on the collision energy dependence of $\eta/s$, obtained from a Bayesian model-to-data analysis of UrQMD + viscous hydrodynamics hybrid model to RHIC beam energy scan data for Au+Au collisions at 19.6, 39 and 62.4 GeV. Changes in the most likely value of $\eta/s$ over beam energy scan range suggest a dependence on baryon chemical potential $\mu_B$. However, we also find the uncertainties regarding the value of $\eta/s$ to be notable at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=19.6$ GeV.

We estimate the chemical freeze-out of light nuclear clusters for NICA energies of above 2 A GeV. On the one hand we use results from the low energy domain of about 35 A MeV, where medium effects have been shown to be important to explain experimental results. On the high energy side of LHC energies the statistical model without medium effects has provided results for the chemical freeze-out. The two approaches extrapolated to NICA energies show a discrepancy that can be attributed to medium effects and that for the deuteron/proton ratio amounts to a factor of about three. These findings underline the importance of a detailed investigation of light cluster production at NICA energies., 10 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Part. Nucl. Lett

We numerically study the spectral properties, the entanglement and the zero-temperature phase structure at nonvanishing chemical potential of the O(3) nonlinear sigma model. Using matrix product states, a particular kind of one-dimensional tensor network states, we show that we are able to reach the asymptotic scaling regime and to reproduce the analytical predictions for the mass gap at vanishing chemical potential. In addition, we study the scaling of the entanglement entropy towards the continuum limit obtaining a central charge consistent with 2. Moreover, our approach does not suffer from the sign problem and we also explore the phase structure of the model for nonzero chemical potential and map out the location of the transitions between different charge sectors with high precision.

The Quark-Meson-Coupling model, which self-consistently relates the dynamics of the internal quark structure of a hadron to the relativistic mean fields arising in nuclear matter, provides a natural explanation to many open questions in low energy nuclear physics, including the origin of many-body nuclear forces and their saturation, the spin-orbit interaction and properties of hadronic matter at a wide range of densities up to those occurring in the cores of neutron stars. Here we focus on four aspects of the model (i) a full comprehensive survey of the theory, including the latest developments, (ii) extensive application of the model to ground state properties of finite nuclei and hypernuclei, with a discussion of similarities and differences between the QMC and Skyrme energy density functionals, (iii) equilibrium conditions and composition of hadronic matter in cold and warm neutron stars and their comparison with the outcome of relativistic mean-field theories and, (iv) tests of the fundamental idea that hadron structure changes in-medium., Comment: 84 pages, 11 figures, in print in Progress in Particle and Nuclear Physics