Chiral phase transition in the presence of spinodal decomposition

Spinodal Decomposition and the Deconfining Phase Transition

Lattice gauge theory investigations of the deconfining phase transitions have mainly been limited to equilibrium studies (an exception is the work by Miller and Ogilvie [1]). The equilibrium transition with two massless quarks is likely second order and it becomes a crossover with two light quarks (and the heavier strange quark) [2]. In nature the finite temperature phase transition is governed...

The Chiral Phase Transition

I review the current understanding of the chiral phase transition in QCD, with particular emphasis on recent results in the instanton liquid model.

Spinodal decomposition in microemulsions

The Proximal Chiral Phase Transition

We consider the form of the chiral symmetry breaking piece of the effective potential in the linear sigma model. Surprisingly, it allows for a second local minimum at both zero and finite temperature. Even though chiral symmetry is not exact, and therefore is not restored in a true phase transition at finite temperature, this second minimum can nevertheless mimic many of the effects of a first ...

Chiral Phase Transition in QCD

We employ non–perturbative flow equations to compute the equation of state for two flavor QCD within an effective quark meson model. This yields the temperature and quark mass dependence of quantities like the chiral condensate or the pion mass. Our treatment covers both the chiral perturbation theory domain of validity and the domain of validity of universality associated with critical phenome...