The QCD Phase Diagram from Chiral Approaches

Abstract

I show an updated QCD phase diagram with recent developments from chiral effective theories and phenomenological models. Expected signals of a QCD critical point accessible in heavy-ion collisions are also discussed. In particular, non-monotonic behavior of fluctuations associated with conserved charges is focused on.

Comments: 8 pages, 6 figures - To appear in the conference proceedings for Quark Matter 2009, March 30 - April 4, Knoxville, Tennessee v2: minor corrections