The curvature of the critical surface (m_ud,m_s)^{crit}(mu): a progress   report
  At zero chemical potential mu, the order of the temperature-driven quark-hadron transition depends on the quark masses m_{u,d} and m_s. Along a critical line bounding the region of first-order chiral transitions in the (m_{u,d},m_s) plane, this transition is second order. When the chemical potential is turned on, this critical line spans a surface, whose curvature at mu=0 can be determined without any sign or overlap problem. Our past measurements on N_t=4 lattices suggest that the region of quark masses for which the transition is first order shrinks when mu is turned on, which makes a QCD chiral critical point at small mu/T unlikely. We present results from two complementary methods, which can be combined to yield information on higher-order terms. It turns out that the O(mu^4) term reinforces the effect of the leading O(mu^2) term, and there is strong evidence that the O(mu^6) and O(mu^8) terms do as well. We also report on simulations underway, where the strange quark is given its physical mass, and where the lattice spacing is reduced. 
Philippe de Forcrand and Owe Philipsen