Thermodynamics of (2+1)-flavor strongly interacting matter at nonzero isospin

Understand

We investigate the phase structure of strongly interacting matter at non-vanishing isospin before the onset of pion condensation in the framework of the unquenched Polyakov-Quark-Meson model with 2+1 quark flavors.

• We show results for the order parameters and all relevant thermodynamic quantities.
• In particular, we obtain a moderate change of the pressure with isospin at vanishing baryon chemical potential, whereas the chiral condensate decreases more appreciably.
• We compare the effective model to recent lattice data for the decrease of the pseudo-critical temperature with the isospin chemical potential.