Split of the pseudo-critical temperatures of chiral and confine/deconfine transitions by temperature gradient

Abstract

Searching of the critical endpoint of the phase transition of Quantum Chromodynamics~(QCD) matter in experiments is of great interest. The temperature in the fireball of a collider is location dependent, however, most theoretical studies address the scenario of uniform temperature. In this work, the effect of temperature gradients is investigated using lattice QCD approach. We find that the temperature gradient catalyzes chiral symmetry breaking, meanwhile the temperature gradient increases the Polyakov loop in the confined phase but suppresses the Polyakov loop in the deconfined phase. Furthermore, the temperature gradient decreases the pseudo-critical temperature of chiral transition but increases the pseudo-critical temperature of the confine/deconfine transition.