Heavy quark chemical potential as probe of the phase diagram of nuclear matter

Abstract

We study the temperature dependence of the strange and charm quark chemical potentials in the phase diagram of nuclear matter, within a modified and generalized hadron gas model, in order to consider phase transitions and to describe phenomena taking place outside the hadronic phase. We employ, in a phenomenological way, the Polyakov loop and scalar quark condensate order parameters, mass/temperature-scaled partition functions and enforce flavor conservation. We propose that the resulting variation of the heavy quark chemical potentials can be directly related to the quark deconfinement and chiral phase transitions. Then, the chemical potential of the strange and charm quark can be considered as an experimentally accessible "order parameter", probing the phase diagram of QCD.