• CURVATURE
• PSEUDO-CRITICAL
• PSEUDOCRITICAL
• QCD

The curvature of the pseudocritical line has been studied through numerical simulations performed using the tree-level Symanzik gauge action and the stout-smeared staggered fermion action. The location of the phase transition has been determined from the inflection point of the chiral condensate using two renormalization prescriptions and the curvature coefficient has been calculated by Taylor expansion, using two definitions for the pseudocritical temperature: $k_1$ has been computed by defining $T_c(\mu_B)$ under the hypothesis of constant $\bar{\psi}\psi_r$ at $T_c$ (hence defining $T_c^0$ as the inflection point of $\langle \bar{\psi}\psi_r \rangle (T, \mu_B=0)$ and $T_c(\mu_B)$ by the relation $\langle \bar{\psi}\psi_r \rangle (T_c(\mu_B), \mu_B) = \langle \bar{\psi}\psi_r \rangle (T_c^0, 0)$), while $k_2$ has been computed as the actual inflection point of $\langle \bar{\psi}\psi_r \rangle$. This set-up allows to give an independent estimate for $k_B$, investigate the systematics and make a proper comparison with previous results reported in the literature.