In medium properties of an axion within a 2+1 flavor Polyakov loop enhanced Nambu–Jona-Lasinio model

Abstract

We estimate the axion properties i.e. its mass, topological susceptibility and the self-coupling within the framework of Polyakov loop enhanced Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (PNJL) model at finite temperature and quark chemical potential. PNJL model, where quarks couple simultaneously to the chiral condensate and to a background temporal quantum chromodynamics (QCD) gauge field, includes two important features of QCD phase transition, i.e. deconfinement and chiral symmetry restoration. The Polyakov loop in PNJL model plays an important role near the critical temperature. We have shown significant difference in the axion properties calculated in PNJL model compared to the same obtained using Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model. We find that both the mass of the axion and its self-coupling are correlated with the chiral transition as well as the confinement-deconfinement transition. We have also estimated the axion properties at finite chemical potential. Across the QCD transition temperature and/or quark chemical potential axion mass and its self-coupling also changes significantly. Since the PNJL model includes both the fermionic sector and the gauge fields, it can give reliable estimates of the axion properties, i.e. it's mass and the self-coupling in a hot and dense QCD medium. We also compare our results with the lattice QCD results whenever available.