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Chiral Phase Transition and Meson Melting from AdS/QCD

We investigate the in-medium behavior of mesons at finite temperature and baryon chemical potential within a soft-wall model of AdS/QCD. We use a quartic scalar potential to obtain the correct form of chiral symmetry breaking. At zero quark mass the chiral phase transition is second-order, becoming a crossover at physical quark mass. At zero baryon chemical potential, we find a chiral transition temperature of 155 MeV in the chiral limit and a pseudo-transition temperature of 151 MeV at physical quark mass, consistent with lattice results. In the low-temperature limit, the second-order transition occurs at a baryon chemical potential of 566 MeV while the rapid crossover occurs at 559 MeV. A new parameterization of the dilaton profile results in improved meson spectra. Meson melting occurs at a lower temperature and chemical potential than the chiral phase transition, so the vector-axial vector mass splitting remains constant until the bound states melt.