Phase structure and critical phenomena in two-flavor QCD by holography

We explore the phase structure of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) with two dynamical quark flavors at finite temperature and baryon chemical potential, employing the nonperturbative gauge/gravity duality approach. Our gravitational model is tailored to align with state-of-the-art lattice data regarding the thermal properties of multiflavor QCD. Following a rigorous parameter calibration to match equations of state and the QCD trace anomaly at zero chemical potential derived from cutting-edge lattice QCD simulations, we investigate thermodynamic quantities and order parameters. We predict the location of the critical endpoint (CEP) at (μCEP,TCEP)=(219,182) MeV at which a line of first-order phase transitions terminate. We compute critical exponents associated with the CEP and find that they almost coincide with the critical exponents of the quantum 3D Ising model. Published by the American Physical Society 2024