Finite density QCD phase transition in the heavy quark region

Understand

We extend our previous study of the QCD phase structure in the heavy quark region to non-zero chemical potentials.

• To identify the critical point where the first order deconfining transition terminates, we study an effective potential defined by the probability distribution function of the plaquette and the Polyakov loop.
• The reweighting technique is shown to be powerful in evaluating the effective potential in a wide range of the plaquette and Polyakov loop expectation values.
• We adopt the cumulant expansion to overcome the sign problem in the calculation of complex phase of the quark determinant.