PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

Lattice QCD at finite density suffers from a severe sign problem, which hasso far prohibited simulations of the cold and dense regime. Here we study theonset of nuclear matter employing a three-dimensional effective theory derivedby combined strong coupling and hopping expansions, which is valid for heavybut dynamical quarks and has a mild sign problem only. Its numericalevaluations agree between a standard Metropolis and complex Langevin algorithm,where the latter is free of the sign problem. Our continuum extrapolated dataclearly show a first order phase transition building up at $\mu_B \approx m_B$as the temperature approaches zero. An excellent description of the data isachieved by an analytic solution in the strong coupling limit.