The curvature of the QCD phase transition line

Abstract

We determine the curvature of the phase transition line in the mu-T plane through an analysis of various observables, including the Polyakov loop, the quark number susceptibilities and the susceptibility of the chiral condensate. The second derivative of these quantities with respect to mu was calculated. The measurements were carried out on N_T = 4,6,8 and 10 lattices generated with a Symanzik improved gauge and stout-link improved 2+1 flavour staggered fermion action using physical quark masses.

Comments: Talk presented at the XXVI International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory, July 14 - 19, 2008, Williamsburg, Virginia, USA. 7 pages, 6 figures