Exploring the Phase Diagram with Taylor Series: Epic Voyage or Just Another Bad Trip

Abstract

It has been suggested in the literature that it may be possible to locate the QCD critical end point using the Taylor series of thermodynamic variables about the $\mu=0$ axis. Since the phase transition at the critical end point is believed to be in the 3D Ising universality class, it would seem natural to test this method with the Ising Model, for which the answer is already known. The finding is that it is in fact possible to pinpoint the location of the Ising critical point using Taylor coefficients.