Speaker
Description
Phase-quenched lattice simulations combined with perturbation theory are an emerging precision approach to determining the thermodynamics of QCD across a wide arc of the phase diagram where the strong coupling constant $\alpha_s$ remains small. In this talk we will introduce this phase-quenched approach to determining QCD's Equation of State (EoS) and argue that at sufficiently high temperatures an unphysical pairing contribution within phase-quenched QCD vanishes. This reduces the difference between phase-quenched and full QCD EoS to a perturbatively small contribution in the asymptotic regime. Furthermore, we will present results for these perturbative corrections up to and including $O(\alpha_s^{7/2})$. This opens the way for future estimation of the EoS beyond the current state-of-the-art at finite density and temperature while including nonperturbative pure-gluonic contributions from the lattice.
