Lattice QCD with chemical potential: evading the fermion-sign problem

Abstract

Since the turn of the millennium there has been tremendous progress in understanding QCD at finite chemical potential, µ. Apart from qualitative results obtained using models, and exact results at very large µ obtained in weak coupling theory, there has been tremendous progress in getting exact and quantitative results from lattice simulations. I summarize the status of lattice QCD at finite chemical potential - locating the critical end-point in the QCD phase diagram, predicting event-to-event fluctuation rates of conserved quantities, and finding the rate of strangeness production.