The QCD Phase Boundary from Quark-Gluon Dynamics

Abstract

We study one-flavor QCD at finite temperature and chemical potential using the functional renormalization group. We discuss the chiral phase transition in QCD and its order with its underlying mechanism in terms of quarks and gluons and analyze the dependence of the phase transition temperature on small quark chemical potentials. Our result for the curvature of the phase boundary at small quark chemical potential relies on only a single input parameter, the value of the strong coupling at the Z mass scale.