Singularities of QCD in the complex chemical potential plane

Abstract

We study the thermodynamic singularities of QCD in the complex chemical potential plane by a numerical simulation of lattice QCD, and discuss a method to understand the nature of the QCD phase transition at finite density from the information of the singularities. The existence of singular points at which the partition function (Z) vanishes is expected in the complex plane. These are called Lee-Yang zeros or Fisher zeros. We investigate the distribution of these singular points using the data obtained by a simulation of two-flavor QCD with p4-improved staggered quarks. The convergence radius of a Taylor expansion of ln Z in terms of the chemical potential is also discussed.