Speaker
Description
Lattice QCD with heavy dynamical quarks reduces to a three-dimensional effective theory of Polyakov loops, after truncated character and strong coupling expansions. This effective theory has a substantially milder sign problem than full QCD, and can either be simulated or treated successfully by analytical methods. This allows for investigations of the heavy QCD phase diagram as a function of temperature and chemical potentials, both for baryon number and isospin. At low temperatures, the expected first-order transition to baryon matter (in $\mu_B$-direction) and the second-order transition to a pion condensate (in $\mu_I$-direction) can be clearly identified. A $(T,\mu_B,\mu_I)$ phase diagram up to nuclear density is presented, based entirely on lattice QCD, and the prospects to reach smaller quark masses are discussed.