LATTICE QCD AT FINITE TEMPERATURE AND DENSITY.

Abstract

With the operation of the RHIC heavy ion program, the theoretical understanding of QCD at finite temperature and density has become increasingly important. Though QCD at finite temperature has been extensively studied using lattice Monte-Carlo simulations over the past twenty years, most physical questions relevant for RHIC (and future) heavy ion experiments remain open. In lattice QCD at finite temperature and density there have been at least two major advances in recent years. First, for the first time calculations of real time quantities, like meson spectral functions have become available. Second, the lattice study of the QCD phase diagram and equation of state have been extended to finite baryon density by several groups. Both issues were extensively discussed in the course of the workshop. A real highlight was the study of the QCD phase diagram in (T, {mu})-plane by Z. Fodor and S. Katz and the determination of the critical end-point for the physical value of the pion mass. This was the first time such lattice calculations at, the physical pion mass have been performed. Results by Z Fodor and S. Katz were obtained using a multi-parameter re-weighting method. Other determinations of the critical end point were also presented, in particular using a Taylor expansion around {mu} = 0 (Bielefeld group, Ejiri et al.) and using analytic continuation from imaginary chemical potential (Ph. de Forcrand and O. Philipsen). The result based on Taylor expansion agrees within errors with the new prediction of Z. Fodor and S. Katz, while methods based on analytic continuation still predict a higher value for the critical baryon density. Most of the thermodynamics studies in full QCD (including those presented at this workshop) have been performed using quite coarse lattices, a = 0.2-0.3 fm. Therefore one may worry about cutoff effects in different thermodynamic quantities, like the transition temperature T{sub tr}. At the workshop U. Heller presented a study of the transition temperature for three different lattice spacings and performed a continuum extrapolation of T{sub tr} for the first time. Lattice calculations of the meson spectral functions were presented by M. Asakawa, S. Datta, E. Laermann and H. Matsufuru. These show that charmonia ground states ({eta}{sub c} and J/{psi}) continue to exist in the plasma at least up to a temperature of 1.7 T{sub tr}. At what temperature charmonia states cease to exist is not yet clear. Calculations presented by M. Asakawa show dissolution of the J/{psi} at T = 1.7 T{sub tr}, while the analysis presented H. Matsufuru provided evidence that ground state charmonia still exist at this temperature. S. Datta argued that the ground state charmonia is likely to dissolve only for temperatures T > 2.25 T{sub tr}, while the P-states are dissociated at, 1.1 T{sub tr}. It is also very interesting that, even in the case of light quarks, meson spectral functions show a resonance-like structure in the plasma phase (talk by E. Laermann). Finally attempts to calculate transport properties in the Quark Gluon Plasma were presented by S. Gupta. The workshop devoted special attention to the finite temperature modification of inter-quark forces and color screening, another area where considerable progress has been made in recent years (talks by 0. Kaczmarek, K. Petrov, O. Philipsen and F. Zantow). Many other new theoretical developments which cannot be discussed here were also presented on the workshop. Altogether the workshop was a great success, for which we thank all the participants.