Speaker
Description
QCD Euclidean space path integrals of have a sign problem when a chemical potential is included; this inhibits our ability to calculate the equation of state (EOS) of nuclear matter. This sign problem goes away if the if the chemical potential is imaginary. Unfortunately imaginary chemical potentials are not physical; traditionally they have been used as the starting point for an analytic continuation to real chemical potentials, but this method fails at low temperatures. This talk proposes a novel way to get upper and lower bounds on the EOS of cold matter $\epsilon(n)$ (where $\epsilon$ is the energy density and $n$ is the baryon number density) directly from calculations using imaginary chemical potentials. The method exploits special relativity and the fact that calculations of the partional function for an imaginary chemical potentials are equivalent to caculations with real Lagrange multipliers enforcing a baryon current density rather than number density.