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Moat regimes within a (2+1)-flavor Polyakov-quark-meson model

Gaoqing Cao

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Phys. Rev. D 112, 034013 – Published 14 August, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/jjs8-mj6f

Abstract

To better understand recent predictions on the moat regime of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) matter, this paper extends the previous work within the two-flavor quark-meson (QM) model to the more realistic 2+1 flavor Polyakov-quark-meson (PQM) model. Mainly, two effects are further taken into account: strange quark and confinement coded through Polyakov loop. Model parameters are chosen to consistently reproduce the pseudocritical temperature from lattice QCD, TC∼156  MeV, and the baryon chemical potential at the critical end point (CEP) from functional renormalization group to QCD matter (FRG-QCD), μB(CEP)∼635  MeV. It is found that the basic features of moat regimes for σ and π mesons remain similar to those from QM model: Moat regimes cover the region where temperature or baryon chemical potential is large; reentrances occur around the critical baryon chemical potential of chiral transition at zero temperature. Thus, the FRG-QCD results can still not be well understood, especially why the extrapolated CEP should be consistent with the boundaries of moat regimes for σ and π mesons. Nevertheless, some basic features can be understood qualitatively, and it is consistent that the pole energies are increasing functions of momenta in the whole T−μB plane. The moat regime and pole energy of K mesons are also studied with the features similar.

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Phys. Rev. D 112, 034013– Published 14 August, 2025
  • Received 7 May 2025
  • Accepted 16 July 2025
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.

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