Exploring QCD phase diagram at vanishing baryon density on the lattice

Abstract

I report on the current status of QCD phase diagram at vanishing baryon density. I focus on the QCD phase diagram with three degenerate quark flavor using Highly Improved Staggered Quarks on $N_{\tau }=6$ lattices. No evidence of a first order phase transition in the pion mass window of $80\lesssim m_{\pi }\lesssim 230$MeV is found. The pion mass at the critical point where the chiral first order phase transition ends is estimated to be $m_{\pi }^c\lesssim 45$ MeV.

Comments: proceedings for Extreme QCD (XQCD 2012), August 21-23, 2012, The George Washington University, Washington DC, USA