Detecting critical points from Lee-Yang edge singularities in lattice QCD

Understand

A new approach is presented to explore the singularity structure of lattice QCD in the complex chemical potential plane.

• Our method can be seen as a combination of the Taylor expansion and analytic continuation approaches.
• Its novelty lies in using rational (Pad\'e) approximants for studying Lee-Yang edge singularities.
• We present a calculation of the cumulants of the net-baryon number as a function of a purely imaginary baryon number chemical potential, obtained with highly improved staggered quarks at temporal lattice extent of $N_\tau=4,6$.