O(N) universality and the chiral phase transition in QCD

Abstract: We discuss universal scaling properties of (2+1)-flavor QCD in the vicinity of the chiral phase transition at vanishing as well as non-vanishing light quark chemical potential (mu_l). We provide evidence for O(N) scaling of the chiral order parameter in (2+1)-flavor QCD and show that the scaling analysis of its derivative with respect to the light quark chemical potential provides a unique approach to the determination of the curvature of the chiral phase transition line in the vicinity of mu_l/T=0.