No abstract

We investigate the phase transition from hadron to quark matter in the general case without the assumption of chemical equilibrium with respect to weak decays. The effects of net strangeness on charge and isospin fractions, chemical potentials, and temperature are studied in the context of the Chiral Mean Field (CMF) model that incorporates chiral symmetry restoration and deconfinement. The extent to which these quantities are probed during deconfinement in conditions expected to exist in protoneutron stars, binary neutron-star mergers, and heavy-ion collisions is analyzed quantitatively via the construction of 3-dimensional phase diagrams.

In this work, we examine in detail the difference between constraining the electric charge fraction and isospin fraction when calculating the deconfinement phase transition in the presence of net strangeness. We present relations among charge and isospin fractions and the corresponding chemical potentials and draw 3-dimensional QCD phase diagrams for matter out of weak equilibrium. Finally, we briefly discuss how our results can be applied to comparisons of matter created in heavy ion collisions and binary neutron star mergers.

In this work, we investigate how the assumption of chemical equilibrium with leptons affects the deconfinement phase transition to quark matter. This is carried out within the framework of the Chiral Mean Field model allowing for nonzero net strangeness, corresponding to the conditions found in astrophysical scenarios. We build three-dimensional quantum chromodynamics phase diagrams with temperature, baryon chemical potential, and either charge or isospin fraction or chemical potential to show how the deconfinement region collapses to a line in the special case of chemical equilibrium, such as the one established in the interior of cold catalyzed neutron stars.

In this work, we discuss the deconfinement phase transition to quark matter in hot/dense matter. We examine the effect that different charge fractions, isospin fractions, net strangeness, and chemical equilibrium with respect to leptons have on the position of the coexistence line between different phases. In particular, we investigate how different sets of conditions that describe matter in neutron stars and their mergers, or matter created in heavy-ion collisions affect the position of the critical end point, namely where the first-order phase transition becomes a crossover. We also present an introduction to the topic of critical points, including a review of recent advances concerning QCD critical points.