title: Onset transition to cold nuclear matter from lattice QCD with heavy quarks.
abstract: Lattice QCD at finite density suffers from a severe sign problem, which has so far prohibited simulations of the cold and dense regime. Here we study the onset of nuclear matter employing a three-dimensional effective theory derived by combined strong coupling and hopping expansions, which is valid for heavy but dynamical quarks and has a mild sign problem only. Its numerical evaluations agree between a standard Metropolis and complex Langevin algorithm, where the latter is free of the sign problem. Our continuum extrapolated data approach a first order phase transition at μ(B) ≈ m(B) as the temperature approaches zero. An excellent description of the data is achieved by an analytic solution in the strong coupling limit.
authors.affiliation: Institut für Theoretische Physik, Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-Universität, Max-von-Laue-Strasse 1, 60438 Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Fromm
authors.affiliation: Institut für Theoretische Physik, Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-Universität, Max-von-Laue-Strasse 1, 60438 Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Langelage
authors.affiliation: Institut für Theoretische Physik, Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-Universität, Max-von-Laue-Strasse 1, 60438 Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Lottini
authors.affiliation: Institut für Theoretische Physik, Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-Universität, Max-von-Laue-Strasse 1, 60438 Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Neuman
authors.affiliation: Institut für Theoretische Physik, Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-Universität, Max-von-Laue-Strasse 1, 60438 Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
authors.forename: O
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Philipsen