Nonlocal PNJL models and heavy hybrid stars

Understand

Nonlocal PNJL models allow for a detailed description of chiral quark dynamics with running quark masses and wave function renormalization in accordance with lattice QCD (LQCD) in vacuum.

• Their generalization to finite temperature T and chemical potential \mu{} allows to reproduce the \mu-dependence of the pseudocritical temperature from LQCD when a nonvanishing vector meson coupling is adjusted.
• This restricts the region for the critical endpoint in the QCD phase diagram and stiffens the quark matter equation of state (EoS).
• It is demonstrated that the construction of a hybrid EoS for compact star applications within a two-phase approach employing the nonlocal PNJL EoS and an advanced hadronic EoS leads to the masquerade problem.