Effective models of two-flavor QCD: finite $\mu$ and $m_q$-dependence

Understand

We study effective models of chiral fields and Polyakov loop expected to describe the dynamics responsible for the phase structure of two-flavor QCD at finite temperature and density.

• We consider chiral sector described either using linear sigma model or Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model and study the phase diagram and determine the location of the critical point as a function of the explicit chiral symmetry breaking (i.e.
• the bare quark mass $m_q$).
• We also discuss the possible emergence of the quarkyonic phase in this model.