We introduce a random matrix model with the symmetries of QCD at finite temperature and chemical potentials for baryon number and isospin. We analyze the phase diagram of this model in the chemical potential plane for different temperatures and quark masses. We find a rich phase structure with five different phases separated by both first and second order lines. The phases are characterized by the pion condensate and the chiral condensate for each of the flavors. In agreement with lattice simulations, we find that in the phase with zero pion condensate the critical temperature depends in the same way on the baryon number chemical potential and on the isospin chemical potential. At nonzero quark mass, we remarkably find that the critical end point at nonzero temperature and baryon chemical potential is split in two by an arbitrarily small isospin chemical potential. As a consequence, there are two crossovers that separate the hadronic phase from the quark-gluon plasma phase at high temperature. Detailed analytical results are obtained at zero temperature and in the chiral limit.

We consider the quark-meson-model in a finite three-dimensional volume using the Schwinger proper-time renormalization group. We derive and solve the flow equations for finite volume in local potential approximation. In order to break chiral symmetry in the finite volume, we introduce a small current quark mass. The corresponding effective meson potential breaks chiral O(4) symmetry explicitly, depending on σ and π fields separately. We calculate the volume dependence of the pion mass and of the pion decay constant with the renormalization group flow equations and compare with recent results from chiral perturbation theory in a finite volume.

We investigate chiral symmetry restoration in finite spatial volume and at finite temperature by calculating the dependence of the chiral phase transition temperature T c on the size of the spatial volume and the current-quark mass for the quark-meson model, using the proper-time Renormalization Group approach. We find that the critical temperature is weakly dependent on the size of the spatial volume for large current-quark masses, but depends strongly on it for small current-quark masses. In addition, for small volumes we observe a dependence on the choice of quark boundary conditions.