The entanglement properties of holographic QCD model with a critical end point

We investigated different entanglement properties of a holographic QCD(hQCD)model with a critical end point at the finite baryon density.Firstly,we considered the holographic entanglement entropy(HEE)of this hQCD model in a spherical shaped region and a strip shaped region.It was determined that the HEE of this hQCD model in both regions can reflect QCD phase transition.Moreover,although the area formulas and minimal area equations of the two regions were quite different,the HEE exhibited a similar behavior on the QCD phase diagram.Therefore,we assert that the behavior of the HEE on the QCD phase diagram is independent of the shape of the subregions.However,the HEE is not an ideal parameter for the characterization of the entanglement between different subregions of a thermal system.As such,we investigated the mutual information(MI),conditional mutual information(CMI),and the entanglement of purification(Ep)in different strip shaped regions.We determined that the three entanglement quantities exhibited some universal behavior;their values did not change significantly in the hadronic matter phase but increased rapidly with the increase in T andμin the QGP phase.Near the phase boundary,these three entanglement quantities changed smoothly in the crossover region and continuously but not smoothly at CEP;they exhibited discontinuous behavior in the first phase transition region.These properties can be used to distinguish between the different phases of strongly coupled matter.     

Locating the QCD critical end point through peaked baryon number susceptibilities along the freeze-out line

We investigate the baryon number susceptibilities up to fourth order along different freeze-out lines in a holographic QCD model with a critical end point(CEP), and we propose that the peaked baryon number susceptibilities along the freeze-out line can be used as a clean signature to locate the CEP in the QCD phase diagram.On the temperature and baryon chemical potential plane, the cumulant ratio of the baryon number susceptibilities(up to fourth order) forms a ridge along the phase boundary, and develops a sword-shaped "mountain" standing upright around the CEP in a narrow and oblate region. The measurement of baryon number susceptibilities from heavy-ion collision experiments is along the freeze-out line. If the freeze-out line crosses the foot of the CEP mountain, then one can observe the peaked baryon number susceptibilities along the freeze-out line, and the kurtosis of the baryon number distributions has the highest magnitude. The data from the first phase of the beam energy scan program at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider indicates that there should be a peak of the kurtosis of the baryon number distribution at a collision energy of around 5 Ge V, which suggests that the freeze-out line crosses the foot of the CEP mountain and the summit of the CEP should be located nearby, around a collision energy of 3–7 GeV.