The QCD phase diagram in the limit of heavy quarks using complex Langevin dynamics

Understand

Complex Langevin simulations allow numerical studies of theories that exhibit a sign problem, such as QCD, and are thereby potentially suitable to determine the QCD phase diagram from first principles.

• Here we study QCD in the limit of heavy quarks for a wide range of temperatures and chemical potentials.
• Our results include an analysis of the adaptive gauge cooling technique, which prevents large excursions into the non-compact directions of the SL($3, \mathbb{C}$) manifold.
• We find that such excursions may appear spontaneously and change the statistical distribution of physical observables, which leads to disagreement with known results.