What is going on with Wilson quarks at high temperature?

Abstract

We present results of a series of simulations of high temperature QCD with two flovors of Wilson quarks, using four and six time slices. With four time sslices the thermal crossover or transition gets steeper with increasing κ until about κ≈0.19, and then becomes less steep as κ increases further. Several observables are studied in detail to explore the nature of the high temperature phase. With six time slices we find strong metastability with hot and cold starts at κ=0.17, 0.18 and 0.19. At κ=0.17 and 0.18 the plaquette, ψ ψ and the Polyakov loop all have very different values with the hot and cold starts, while at κ=0.19 the plaquette and ψ ψ have different values but the Polyakov loop is small for both hot and cold starts.