Heavy-quark corner of the Columbia plot from the center-symmetric Curci-Ferrari model

We investigate the heavy-quark corner of the Columbia plot using the gluon potential derived from the Curci-Ferrari extension of the Faddeev-Popov gauge fixing in the center-symmetric Landau gauge, as a proxy for the Polyakov loop potential. In line with the observation that Landau gauge couplings are not that large in the case of heavy-quark QCD, we consider a one-loop approximation and test its consistency by using various renormalization schemes while investigating the dependence of our results on the renormalization scale. We find that the main qualitative features of the phase structure in the heavy-quark regime are reproduced. Notably, we have direct access to real chemical potentials, and have tested that extrapolations from imaginary chemical potentials approximate the direct calculation well until large chemical potentials. Our results agree quantitatively with those of simulations to 10% accuracy, which is the expected precision of the one-loop calculations in applications of the Curci-Ferrari model to Yang-Mills or heavy-quark QCD theories.