Phase structure and critical phenomena in 2-flavor QCD by holography

Abstract: We explore the phase structure of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) with two dynamical quark flavors at finite temperature and baryon chemical potential, employing the non-perturbative gauge/gravity duality approach. Our gravitational model is tailored to align with state-of-the-art lattice data regarding the thermal properties of multi-flavor QCD. Following a rigorous parameter calibration to match equations of state and the QCD trace anomaly at zero chemical potential derived from cutting-edge lattice QCD simulations, we investigate thermodynamic quantities and order parameters. We predict the location of the critical endpoint (CEP) at $(\mu_{\text{CEP}}, T_{\text{CEP}})=(219,182)$ MeV at which a line of first-order phase transitions terminate. We compute critical exponents associated with the CEP and find that they almost coincide with the critical exponents of the quantum 3D Ising model.