Spectral density analysis of the chiral transition in nf=4 finite temperature QCD

Abstract

We apply the spectral density reweighting technique to the analysis of the chiral phase transition in finite-temperature lattice quantum chromodynamics (QCD) with four flavors of dynamical staggered fermions and m q a=0.025. Our simulations were performed using the hybrid Monte Carlo method for L t L 3 lattices with L t =4 and L=6, 8 and 10. We calculate partition function zeros, as well as the maxima of the specific heat and of the susceptibilities for the Polyakov loop and for the chiral condensate. A finite size scaling analysis of these data leads to preliminary results for the critical coupling β c, for the critical exponent ν, for the latent heat, and for the jumps in the Polyakov loop and in the chiral condensate.