Dressed Polyakov loop and flavor dependent phase transitions

Abstract

The chiral condensate and dressed Polyakov loop at finite temperature and density have been investigated in the framework of Nf = 2+1 Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model with two degenerate u, d quarks and one strange quark. In the case of explicit chiral symmetry breaking with physical quark masses, it is found that the phase transitions for light u, d quarks and s quark are sequentially happened, and the separation between the transition lines for different flavors becomes wider and wider with the increase of baryon density. For each flavor, the pseudo-critical temperatures for chiral condensate and dressed Polyakov loop differ in a narrow transition range in the lower baryon density region, and the two transitions coincide in the higher baryon density region.

9 pages, 9 figures; Version accepted in Phys. Rev. D