Fig. 1. (a) The rightmost curve represents the phase diagram derived using the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model, the dashed line of the rightmost curve denotes the crossover, the symbol × denotes the first-order phase transition, and the junction where the dashed line and the crosses meet is a critical endpoint (CEP). The other three lines in the left panel are the hypothetical freeze-out curves. (b, c) The ratios of the high-order susceptibilities m1Bandm2B compared to the collision energysNN obtained along the three freeze-out curves in (a)^[116]

Fig. 2. Experimental result from measuring R32p, relative to the collision energy,sNN measured by the STAR experiment for an Au+Au collision with 0%~5% centrality, and the theoretical results ofR32B relative tosNN from the renormalization-group-based chiral perturbation theory^[125]

Fig. 3. Experimental result from measuring Rn2p relative to the collision energysNN measured by the STAR experiment for Au+Au collisions with 0%~5% centrality, and the theoretical results ofRn2B relative tosNN from the renormalization-group-based chiral perturbation theory^[125]

Fig. 4. The chiral phase diagram from the separable model and the variation of the critical endpoint (CEP) relative to μ5 values^[145]

Fig. 5. The variation of the critical endpoint (CEP) relative to μ5 calculated via the MT model and QC model, where the hollow circles and triangles from right to left correspond toμ5=(0,0.1,0.2,0.3,0.4,0.6,0.8)GeV, respectively^[147]

Fig. 6. Influence of the truncation parameter on temperature-dependent term of the critical endpoint (CEP) in terms of its projection onto the μ-μ5 plane within the Polyakov-loop-extended Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (PNJL) model^[151]

Fig. 7. Shift of the critical endpoint (CEP) location with respect to the volume predicted by the Dyson-Schwinger (DS) equations under the Rainbow truncation^[156]

Fig. 8. The relationship between the meson melting temperature in a hot spherical cavity and the cavity radius^[161]. The y-axis represents the binding energy of charm and anti-charm quarks, whose vanishing meets the criteria for the meson melting temperature.

Fig. 9. The variation of the effective quark mass with temperature at different angular velocities when radius R=1.97fm, locationr=0.8R, and chemical potentialμ=0^[57]

Fig. 10. The variation of the effective quark mass with chemical potential at different angular velocities when the radius R=1.97fm, locationr=0.8R, and temperatureμ=0^[57]

Fig. 11. The equation of states of strange quark matter and hadronic matter^[179]

Fig. 12. Mass-radius relations of hybrid stars^[179]. The shaded region represents the mass constraint on neutron stars from PSR J0348+0432.

Fig. 13. Tidal deformability Λ1-Λ2 of hybrid stars and the pure neutron star^[179]. The long straight dotted line indicates the boundary ofΛ1=Λ2, along which the above stars are not deformable.

Fig. 14. Stability windows of two-flavor and three-flavor quark matter^[198]. Rv=Gv/G represents the ratio of coupling constants of vector interaction and scalar interaction,α is the weighting factor of the exchange interaction channel, andB is the bag constant.

Fig. 15. Mass-radius relations for quark stars^[198]. The available mass-radius constraints of neutron stars from PSR J0740+6620 and PSR J0030+0451 (upper right loops and lower right loops), and the binary tidal deformability constraint from LIGO/Virgo GW170817 (left loops) are displayed.

Fig. 16. At absolute zero, the relationship between the effective quark mass and chemical potential from the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model with the self-consistent mean field approximation method and three-momentum cutoff regularization^[196]