Quark-Hadron Critical Point consistent with Bootstrap and Lattice QCD

Abstract

The critical sector of strong interactions at high temperatures is explored in the frame of two complementary paradigms: Statistical Bootstrap for the hadronic phase and Lattice QCD for the Quark-Gluon partition function. A region of thermodynamic instability of hadronic matter was found, as a direct prediction of Statistical Bootstrap. As a result, critical end point solutions for nonzero chemical potential were traced in the phase diagram of strongly interacting matter, consistently with chiral QCD and recent lattice calculations. The relevance of these solutions for current and future experiments with nuclei at high energies is also discussed.