We calculated the QCD equation of state using Taylor expansions that include contributions from up to sixth order in the baryon, strangeness and electric charge chemical potentials. Calculations have been performed with the Highly Improved Staggered Quark action in the temperature range $T\in [135\mathrm{MeV},330\mathrm{MeV}]$ using up to four different sets of lattice cutoffs corresponding to lattices of size $N_{\sigma }^3\times N_{\tau }$ with aspect ratio $N_{\sigma }/N_{\tau }=4$ and $N_{\tau }=6-16$. The strange quark mass is tuned to its physical value, and we use two strange to light quark mass ratios $m_s/m_l=20$ and 27, which in the continuum limit correspond to a pion mass of about 160 and 140 MeV, respectively. Sixth-order results for Taylor expansion coefficients are used to estimate truncation errors of the fourth-order expansion. We show that truncation errors are small for baryon chemical potentials less then twice the temperature (${\mu }_B\le 2T$). The fourth-order equation of state thus is suitable for the modeling of dense matter created in heavy ion collisions with center-of-mass energies down to $\sqrt{s_{NN}}\sim 12\mathrm{GeV}$. We provide a parametrization of basic thermodynamic quantities that can be readily used in hydrodynamic simulation codes. The results on up to sixth-order expansion coefficients of bulk thermodynamics are used for the calculation of lines of constant pressure, energy and entropy densities in the $T\text{−}{\mu }_B$ plane and are compared with the crossover line for the QCD chiral transition as well as with experimental results on freeze-out parameters in heavy ion collisions. These coefficients also provide estimates for the location of a possible critical point. We argue that results on sixth-order expansion coefficients disfavor the existence of a critical point in the QCD phase diagram for ${\mu }_B/T\le 2$ and $T/T_c({\mu }_B=0)>0.9$.

• Received 20 January 2017

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.95.054504