Lattice Study of QCD Phase Structure by Canonical Approach

We investigate the potential for using the canonical ensemble approach to determine the QCD phase diagram in the temperature - density plane. This approach allows us to study the finite baryon density regions where the well-known sign problem obstructs the standard lattice QCD numerical study. Using the canonical ensemble approach, we perform lattice QCD simulations at the pure imaginary quark chemical potential. In this case no sign problem occurs. We then calculate physical quantities at the real chemical potential through the canonical partition functions. In this approach, the canonical partition functions, $Z_n$, play an essential role for mapping the information from the pure imaginary chemical potential values to the real ones. We analyze how inaccuracies in the numerical data obtained at the imaginary chemical potential affect the results for the real values, where the QCD predictions confront experimental quark-gluon plasma (QGP) data. We compute the higher moments of the baryon number including the kurtosis and compare our results with information from relativistic heavy-ion collisions.