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Phase diagram and critical endpoint for strongly-interacting quarks

We introduce a method based on the chiral susceptibility, which enables one to draw a phase diagram in the chemical-potential/temperature plane for strongly-interacting quarks whose interactions are described by any reasonable gap equation, even if the diagrammatic content of the quark-gluon vertex is unknown. We locate a critical endpoint (CEP) at (μ^E,T^E) ~ (1.0,0.9)T_c, where T_c is the critical temperature for chiral symmetry restoration at μ=0; and find that a domain of phase coexistence opens at the CEP whose area increases as a confinement length-scale grows.