Chiral symmetry breaking above the QCD phase transition

Abstract

We study both 〈 ψ ψ〉 and an anomalous difference of susceptibilities just above the QCD phase transition on N t = 4 lattices. This is done for pure SU (3) gauge theory with 25 values of “valence” quark mass and for a 2-flavor simulation with dynamical quark masses of .01, .015, .02 and .025. In all cases the limit of small quark mass is more regular than expected in the standard picture of anomalous chiral symmetry breaking.