Three-flavor chiral phase transition and axial symmetry breaking with the functional renormalization group

Abstract: The interplay of mesonic fluctuations with an axial $U(1)_A$-symmetry breaking and resulting effects on the location of a possibly existing critical endpoint in the QCD phase diagram are investigated in a framework of the functional renormalization group within a $N_f = 2 + 1$ flavor quark-meson model truncation. The axial $U(1)_A$-symmetry breaking is imposed by a mesonic Kobayashi-Maskawa-'t Hooft determinant. The quark mass sensitivity of the chiral phase transition with and without the $U(1)_A$-symmetry breaking is studied.