QCD under Extreme Conditions

PI Zoltan Fodor, Pennsylvania State University
Co-PI Rene Bellwied, University of Houston
Claudia Ratti, University of Houston
Szabolcs Borsanyi, Wuppertal University
Ingo Tews, Los Alamos National Laboratory
Sandor Katz, Eotvos University
Volodymyr Vovchenko, University of Houston
Paolo Parotto, University of Turin
Award INCITE
Hours 856,000 Aurora node-hours
Year
Domain Physics
The phase diagram of the strong interaction on the density versus temperature plane. Low temperature and low density is the hadronic phase. High temperature and low density is the quark-gluon plasma phase. Between them there is a first order transition line (brown solid line) with a second order endpoint (red point/circle). At low temperatures and large densities one expects a rich phase structure (liquid-gas, compact stars, color superconductivity). The green arrow shows the evolution of the early universe

The phase diagram of the strong interaction on the density versus temperature plane. Low temperature and low density is the hadronic phase. High temperature and low density is the quark-gluon plasma phase. Between them there is a first order transition line (brown solid line) with a second order endpoint (red point/circle). At low temperatures and large densities one expects a rich phase structure (liquid-gas, compact stars, color superconductivity). The green arrow shows the evolution of the early universe, Blue arrows show possible trajectories of collider experiments. Our ultimate goal is the description of compact stars.

Credit to Szabolcs Borsanyi, University of Wuppertal, Germany

Project Summary

This project will use first-principles simulations with physical quark masses to map the QCD phase diagram, compute the equation of state at nonzero density, and identify signatures of the critical endpoint and chiral critical behavior. These results will guide experiments and help advance understanding of high-density strongly interacting matter.

Project Description

This work aims to advance knowledge of the phase diagram and equation of state of strong interactions, by means of first-principle simulations. The researchers’ main goals are to locate the critical endpoint and explore the strongly interacting high-density regime relevant to neutron stars and their mergers—some of the main unsolved problems in the theory of strong interactions.

Ordinary hadronic matter undergoes a transition to a deconfined phase, quark-gluon plasma, at extremely high temperature or densities. In the universe, the reverse transition took place a few microseconds after the Big Bang: the basic building blocks of nature, the hadrons, were formed at this time. The Large Hadron Collider Heavy Ion program recreates this transition in the laboratory. Its DOE-funded detector upgrade will enable us to improve the precision in the data and thus search for new phenomena, such as experimental evidence for near criticality in the QCD transition. This project will compute experimental signatures to the onset of chiral critical behavior such as fluctuations of conserved charges.

A hydrodynamic description of the strongly interacting plasma requires the local equation of state at nonzero light and strange density. This project will compute it in the continuum limit with physical quark masses. Brookhaven’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider explores the same transition in a broad range of densities, searching for a critical point in the QCD phase diagram—a difficult task, since there are no first principles to predict its location; direct simulations at finite density have remained elusive because of a sign problem. Thanks to a recent algorithmic development, these simulations, run with physical quark masses, can overcome this barrier and scan the phase diagram for features such as the cross-over line and the critical end point.

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