The critical end point of quantum chromodynamics

Abstract

We investigate the critical end point (CEP) of QCD with two flavours of light dynamical quarks at finite lattice cutoff a = ¼T using a Taylor expansion of the baryon number susceptibility. We find a strong volume dependence of the position of the critical end point. In the large volume limit we obtain T^E/T_c ≈ 0.95 and μ^E_B/T^E ≈ 1.1, where Tc is the cross over temperature at zero chemical potential, and T^E and μ^E_B are the temperature and the baryon chemical potential at the critical end point. The small value of μ^E_B places it in the range of observability in energy scans at the RHIC.