Volume and quark mass dependence of the chiral phase transition (original) (raw)

QCD Phase Transition with Chiral Quarks and Physical Quark Masses

Physical Review Letters, 2014

We report on the first lattice calculation of the QCD phase transition using chiral fermions at physical values of the quark masses. This calculation uses 2+1 quark flavors, spatial volumes between (4 fm) 3 and (11 fm) 3 and temperatures between 139 and 196 MeV . Each temperature was calculated using a single lattice spacing corresponding to a temporal Euclidean extent of Nt = 8. The disconnected chiral susceptibility, χ disc shows a pronounced peak whose position and height depend sensitively on the quark mass. We find no metastability in the region of the peak and a peak height which does not change when a 5 fm spatial extent is increased to 10 fm. Each result is strong evidence that the QCD "phase transition" is not first order but a continuous cross-over for mπ = 135 MeV. The peak location determines a pseudo-critical temperature Tc = 155(1)(8) MeV. Chiral SU (2)L ×SU (2)R symmetry is fully restored above 164 MeV, but anomalous U (1)A symmetry breaking is non-zero above Tc and vanishes as T is increased to 196 MeV.

The chiral and deconfinement aspects of the QCD transition

2011

We present results on the chiral and deconfinement properties of the QCD transition at finite temperature. Calculations are performed with 2+1 flavors of quarks using the p4, asqtad and HISQ/tree actions. Lattices with temporal extent N_tau=6, 8 and 12 are used to understand and control discretization errors and to reliably extrapolate estimates obtained at finite lattice spacings to the continuum limit. The chiral transition temperature is defined in terms of the phase transition in a theory with two massless flavors and analyzed using O(N) scaling fits to the chiral condensate and susceptibility. We find consistent estimates from the HISQ/tree and asqtad actions and our main result is T_c=154 +/- 9 MeV.

The chiral phase transition in QCD

Zeitschrift f�r Physik C Particles and Fields, 1988

The Chiral Phase Transition in QCD is studied analytically by looking at truncations of the Schwinger-Dyson equation for the quark self-mass. We find that the usual implementation of the gluon propagator at non-zero temperature is far too simple. When the gluons are given the correct qualitative non-zero temperature behaviour, the calculation of the critical temperature changes significantly.

Toward a first-principle derivation of confinement and chiral-symmetry-breaking crossover transitions in QCD

Physical Review D, 2010

We give a theoretical framework to obtain a low-energy effective theory of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) towards a first-principle derivation of confinement/deconfinement and chiral-symmetry breaking/restoration crossover transitions. In fact, we demonstrate that an effective theory obtained using simple but non-trivial approximations within this framework enables us to treat both transitions simultaneously on equal footing. A resulting effective theory is regarded as a modified and improved version of nonlocal Polyakov-loop extended Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (nonlocal PNJL) models proposed recently by Hell, Rössner, Cristoforetti and Weise, and Sasaki, Friman and Redlich, extending the original (local) PNJL model by Fukushima and others. A novel feature is that the nonlocal NJL coupling depends explicitly on the temperature and Polyakov loop, which affects the entanglement between confinement and chiral symmetry breaking, together with the cross term introduced through the covariant derivative in the quark sector considered in the conventional PNJL model. The chiral symmetry breaking/restoration transition is controlled by the nonlocal NJL interaction, while the confinement/deconfinement transition in the pure gluon sector is specified by the nonperturbative effective potential for the Polyakov loop obtained recently by Braun, Gies, Marhauser and Pawlowski. The basic ingredients are a reformulation of QCD based on new variables and the flow equation of the Wetterich type in the Wilsonian renormalization group. This framework can be applied to investigate the QCD phase diagram at finite temperature and density.

Nonperturbative Flow Equations, Low-Energy QCD, and the Chiral Phase Transition

1997

We review the formalism of the effective average action in quantum field theory which corresponds to a coarse grained free energy in statistical mechanics. The associated exact renormalization group equation and possible nonperturbative approximations for its solution are discussed. This is applied to QCD where one observes the consecutive emergence of mesonic bound states and spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking as the coarse graining scale is lowered. We finally present a study of the chiral phase transition in two flavor QCD. A precision estimate of the universal critical equation of state for the three-dimensional O(4) Heisenberg model is presented. We explicitly connect the O(4) universal behavior near the critical temperature and zero quark mass with the physics at zero temperature and a realistic pion mass. For realistic quark masses the pion correlation length near T c turns out to be smaller than its zero temperature value.

Modelling the QCD phase transition with an effective Lagrangian of light and massive hadrons

Nuclear Physics A, 1998

The temperature dependence of quark and gluon condensates in QCD as precursor of the chiral and deconfining phase transition is modelled with a conformally extended non-linear σ-model including broken chiral and scale invariance. The model is further enlarged by including (free) heavier hadrons. Within this frame we then study the interplay of QCD scale breaking effects and heavier hadrons in chiral symmetry restoration.

Universal Scaling Properties of QCD Close to the Chiral Limit

Acta Physica Polonica B Proceedings Supplement, 2021

We present a lattice QCD based determination of the chiral phase transition temperature in QCD with two massless (up and down) and one strange quark having its physical mass. We propose and calculate two novel estimators for the chiral transition temperature for several values of the light quark masses, corresponding to Goldstone pion masses in the range of 58 MeV m π 163 MeV. The chiral phase transition temperature is determined by extrapolating to vanishing pion mass using universal scaling relations. After thermodynamic, continuum and chiral extrapolations we find the chiral phase transition temperature T 0 c = 132 +3 −6 MeV. We also show some preliminary calculations that use the conventional estimator for the pseudo-critical temperature and compare with the new estimators for T 0 c. Furthermore, we show results for the ratio of the chiral order parameter and its susceptibility and argue that this ratio can be used to differentiate between O(N) and Z 2 universality classes in a non-parametric manner.

Mechanism of chiral symmetry breaking for three flavours of light quarks and extrapolations of Lattice QCD results

2012

In this thesis, we focus on some aspects concerning hadronic phenomena at low energy, below 1 GeV, under which the spontaneous breaking of chiral symmetry takes place. Under this scale, the spectrum of Quantum Chromodynamics reduces to an octet of light pseudo-scalar mesons (π, K and η). But because of the confinement property, QCD under 1 GeV is highly non-perturbative, it is thus not possible to describe at low energy the dynamics of these mesons in terms of gluons and quarks (in that case the three light quarks u,d, and s). Two main alternatives exist to circumvent this major obstacle: Lattice QCD and Effective Field Theories. Lattice QCD is concerned with the numerical computations of various hadronic observables, while Effective Field Theories correspond to analytical frameworks adapted to a particular energy scale. In the case of QCD at low energy, this role is devoted to Chiral Perturbation Theory (ChiPT). This theory can be built either from two quark flavours (u and d), or ...

The Phases of QCD

arXiv (Cornell University), 1996

In the recent years we have learned that light quarks play a crucial role in QCD-like theories, transforming it to many different phases. We review what is known about them, both from lattice and non-lattice approaches. A particularly simple mechanism of the QCD chiral restoration phase transition is discussed first: it suggests that it is a transition from randomly placed tunneling events (instantons) at low T to strongly localized tunneling-anti-tunneling pairs at high T. Many features of the transition found on the lattice can be explained in this simple picture. Very relevant for RHIC, this approach predicts a strong non-perturbative interaction between quarks above the phase transition. It also predicts that QGP-like phase sets in at zero temperature, provided few more light quark flavors are added to QCD. Finally, we also discuss possible experimental signatures of the QCD phase transition. One issue is CERN dilepton data, possibly related with "dropping" masses of ρ, A 1 mesons. Another is direct manifestation of a sof teness of EOS (smallness of pressure/energy density) in the phase transition region in flow and even the global lifetime of the system.