Baryon effects on the location of QCD's critical end point

Understand

The location of the critical end point of QCD has been determined in previous studies of $N_f=2+1$ and $N_f=2+1+1$ dynamical quark flavors using a (truncated) set of Dyson-Schwinger equations for the quark and gluon propagators of Landau-gauge QCD.

• A source for systematic errors in these calculations has been the omission of terms in the quark-gluon interaction that can be parametrized in terms of baryonic degrees of freedom.
• These have a potentially large dependence on chemical potential and therefore may affect the location of the critical end point.
• In this exploratory study we estimate the effects of these contributions, both in the vacuum and at finite temperature and chemical potential.