Coupling of pion condensate, chiral condensate and Polyakov loop in an extended NJL model

The Nambu Jona-Lasinio model with a Polyakov loop is extended to finite isospin chemical potential case, which is characterized by simultaneous coupling of pion condensate, chiral condensate and Polyakov loop. The pion condensate, chiral condensate and the Polyakov loop as functions of temperature and isospin chemical potential are investigated by minimizing the thermodynamic potential of the system. The resulting $(T,\mu_I)$ phase diagram is studied with emphasis on the critical point and Polyakov loop dynamics. The tricritical point for the pion superfluidity phase transition is confirmed and the phase transition for isospin symmetry restoration in high isospin chemical potential region perfectly coincides with the crossover phase transition for Polyakov loop. These results are in agreement with the Lattice QCD data.Comment: 15pages, 8 figure

Overcome Competitive Exclusion in Ecosystems

Explaining biodiversity in nature is a fundamental problem in ecology. An outstanding challenge is embodied in the so-called Competitive Exclusion Principle: two species competing for one limiting resource cannot coexist at constant population densities, or more generally, the number of consumer species in steady coexistence cannot exceed that of resources. The fact that competitive exclusion is rarely observed in natural ecosystems has not been fully understood. Here we show that by forming chasing triplets among the consumers and resources in the consumption process, the Competitive Exclusion Principle can be naturally violated. The modeling framework developed here is broadly applicable and can be used to explain the biodiversity of many consumer-resource ecosystems and hence deepens our understanding of biodiversity in nature.Comment: Manuscript 13 pages, 10 figures; SI 15 pages, 8 figure

QCD phase transitions via a refined truncation of Dyson-Schwinger equations

We investigate both the chiral and deconfinement phase transitions of QCD matter in a refined scheme of Dyson-Schwinger equations, which have been shown to be successful in giving the meson mass spectrum and matching the interaction with the results from ab initio computation. We verify the equivalence of the chiral susceptibility criterion with different definitions for the susceptibility and confirm that the chiral susceptibility criterion is efficient to fix not only the chiral phase boundary but also the critical end point (CEP), especially when one could not have the effective thermodynamical potential. We propose a generalized Schwinger function criterion for the confinement. We give the phase diagram of both phase transitions and show that in the refined scheme the position of the CEP shifts to lower chemical potential and higher temperature. Based on our calculation and previous results of the chemical freeze out conditions, we propose that the CEP locates in the states of the matter generated by the Au--Au collisions with $\sqrt{s_{NN}^{}}=9\sim15$ GeV.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, 1 tabl

Interface Effect in QCD Phase Transitions via Dyson-Schwinger Equation Approach

With the chiral susceptibility criterion we obtain the phase diagram of strong-interaction matter in terms of temperature and chemical potential in the framework of Dyson-Schwinger equations (DSEs) of QCD.After calculating the pressure and some other thermodynamic properties of the matter in the DSE method, we get the phase diagram in terms of temperature and baryon number density. We also obtain the interface tension and the interface entropy density to describe the inhomogeneity of the two phases in the coexistence region of the first order phase transition. After including the interface effect, we find that the total entropy density of the system increases in both the deconfinement (dynamical chiral symmetry restoration) and the hadronization (dynamical chiral symmetry breaking) processes of the first order phase transitions and thus solve the entropy puzzle in the hadronization process.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figures, and 1 tabl