QCD thermodynamics with eight time slices

Abstract

Preliminary simulations of lattice QCD with two flavors of Kogut-Susskind quarks with masses of $0.025{a}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$ and $0.0125{a}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$ locate the expected crossover from the low-temperature regime of ordinary hadronic matter to the high-temperature chiral-symmetric regime. These calculations are insufficient to distinguish between a rapid crossover and a true phase transition.