Speaker
Description
A proper understanding of QCD under extreme conditions such as high temperature and densities is of fundamental importance for the theoretical description of, e.g., heavy-ion collisions, neutron stars, and the early universe. However, the non-perturbative study of QCD at non-zero baryon density from the point of view of lattice field theory is hampered by the infamous sign problem, preventing the straightforward application of established importance-sampling techniques. A possible way out is provided by the complex Langevin approach, which is based on the stochastic evolution of complexified degrees of freedom in an auxiliary time dimension. We present continuum-extrapolated results of the first complex Langevin simulations of QCD with physical pion masses, reaching high baryon densities but restricting to temperatures above the crossover. In particular, we have computed the QCD equation of state including the pressure, energy density, and various derived quantities. Moreover, we report on our recent efforts to better understand the problem of wrong convergence that complex Langevin simulations sometimes face and how existing correctness criteria compare against one another.