Heavy-ion collisions and lattice QCD at finite baryon density

We discuss a relation between the QCD thermodynamics obtained from a statistical analysis of particle production in heavy-ion collisions at SPS and RHIC energies and recent LGT results at finite chemical potential. We show that basic thermodynamic properties obtained from the phenomenological statistical operator of a hadron resonance gas that describes particle yields in heavy-ion collisions are consistent with recent LGT results. We argue that for T less than or equal to T-c the equation of state derived from Monte Carlo simulations of two quark-flavour QCD at finite chemical potential can be well described by a hadron resonance gas when using the same set of approximations as used in LGT calculations. We examine the influence of a finite quark mass on the position of the deconfinement transition in temperature and chemical potential plane.