QCD phase diagram at finite isospin and baryon chemical potentials with the self-consistent mean field approximation

The self-consistent mean field approximation of the two-flavor NJL model, with alpha free parameter a to reflect the competition between the direct channel and the exchange channel, is employed to study the QCD phase structure at finite isospin chemical potential mu(I), finite baryon chemical potential mu(B) and finite temperature T, and especially to study the location of the QCD critical point. Our results show that in order to match the corresponding lattice results of isospin density and energy density, the contributions of the exchange channel need to be considered in the framework of the NJL model, and a weighting factor alpha = 0.5 should be taken. It is also found that for fixed isospin chemical potentials, the lower temperature of the phase transition is obtained with increasing alpha in the T-mu(I) plane, and the largest difference of the phase transition temperature with different alpha's appears at mu(I) similar to 1.5m(pi). At mu(I) = 0 the temperature of the QCD critical end point (CEP) decreases with increasing alpha, while the critical baryon chemical potential increases. At high isospin chemical potential (mu(I) = 500 MeV), the temperature of the QCD tricritical point (TCP) increases with increasing alpha, and in the low temperature regions the system will transition from the pion superfluidity phase to the normal phase as mu(B) increases. At low density, the critical temperature of the QCD phase transition with different alpha's rapidly increases with mu(I) at the beginning, and then increases smoothly around mu(I) > 300 MeV. In the high baryon density region, the increase of the isospin chemical potential will raise the critical baryon chemical potential of the phase transition.

Automated summary

The self-consistent mean field approximation of the two-flavor NJL model was used to study the QCD phase structure, showing that contributions of the exchange channel need to be considered and a weighting factor needs to be chosen to match lattice results. The study revealed that the QCD phase transition temperature and critical points vary with different parameters under different conditions.