The canonical approach to Finite Density QCD

Abstract

We present a canonical approach to study properties of QCD at finite baryon density rho, and apply it to the determination of the phase diagram of four-flavour QCD. For a pion mass of about 350 MeV, the first-order transition between the hadronic and the plasma phase gives rise to a co-existence region in the T-rho plane, which we study in detail. We obtain accurate results for systems containing up to 30 baryons and quark chemical potentials mu up to 2T. Our T-mu phase diagram agrees with the literature when mu/T < 1. At larger chemical potential, we observe a ``bending down'' of the phase boundary. We characterise the two phases with simple models: the hadron resonance gas in the hadronic phase, the free massless quark gas in the plasma phase.