Chiral dynamics in QCD at finite chemical potential

Abstract

We present the renormalized Taylor expansion of the chiral condensate with chemical potential. The relation with the Taylor coefficients of meson susceptibilities and the quark mass dependence of the quark number susceptibilities are obtained through chiral Ward identities and Maxwell relations. The continuum limit is obtained in quenched and two flavor QCD. In N_f=2 QCD, the quadratic response coefficients of the chiral condensate to chemical potential indicate that pion fluctuations decrease at finite chemical potential toward the critical end point. We discuss how these observables can be used to test other features of the QCD phase diagram.