Speed of sound, breaking of conformal limit and instabilities in quark-gluon plasma at finite baryon density

Abstract

The properties of the quark-gluon plasma(QGP) in the presence of baryon chemical potential are studied using the Field Correlator Method(FCM). At low densities the QGP thermodynamics with the colormagnetic confinement and the Polyakov line interaction is in good agreement with lattice data,and the speed of sound satisfies $C_s^2\leq \frac13$,but in the intermediate range of densities the speed of sound displays a singular behaviour and one needs density modifications of the Polyakov line interaction to avoid instabilities. In particular for $\mu_q >0.5$ GeV there exists a region in the $(\mu, T)$ plane where $C^2_s$ violates the conformal limit. This behaviour is strongly connected to the properties of the Polyakov loop and its density dependence.