Chiral phase transition at finite chemical potential in 2+1-flavor soft-wall AdS/QCD

Understand

The phase transition from hadronic matter to chirally-symmetric quark-gluon plasma is expected to be a rapid crossover at zero quark chemical potential ($\mu$), becoming first order at some finite value of $\mu$, indicating the presence of a critical point.

• Using a three-flavor soft-wall model of AdS/QCD, we investigate the effect of varying the light and strange quark masses on the order of the chiral phase transition.
• At zero quark chemical potential, we reproduce the Columbia Plot, which summarizes the results of lattice QCD and other holographic models.
• We then extend this holographic model to examine the effects of finite quark chemical potential.