High Temperature Phase Of QCD Research Articles

Fate of Chiral Symmetries in the Quark-Gluon Plasma from an Instanton-Based Random Matrix Model of QCD.

We propose a new way of understanding how chiral symmetry is realized in the high temperature phase of QCD. Based on the finding that a simple free instanton gas precisely describes the details of the lowest part of the spectrum of the lattice overlap Dirac operator, we propose an instanton-based random matrix model of QCD with dynamical quarks. Simulations of this model reveal that even for small quark mass the Dirac spectral density has a singularity at the origin, caused by a dilute gas of free instantons. Even though the interaction, mediated by light dynamical quarks, creates small instanton-anti-instanton molecules, those do not influence the singular part of the spectrum, and this singular part is shown to dominate Banks-Casher type sums in the chiral limit. By generalizing the Banks-Casher formula for the singular spectrum, we show that in the chiral limit the chiral condensate vanishes if there are at least two massless flavors. Our model also indicates a possible way of resolving a long-standing debate, as it suggests that for two massless quark flavors the U(1)_{A} symmetry is likely to remain broken up to arbitrarily high finite temperatures.

Vacuum correlators at short distances from lattice QCD

Non-perturbatively computing the hadronic vacuum polarization at large photon virtualities and making contact with perturbation theory enables a precision determination of the electromagnetic coupling at the Z pole, which enters global electroweak fits. In order to achieve this goal ab initio using lattice QCD, one faces the challenge that, at the short distances which dominate the observable, discretization errors are hard to control. Here we address challenges of this type with the help of static screening correlators in the high-temperature phase of QCD, yet without incurring any bias. The idea is motivated by the observations that (a) the cost of high-temperature simulations is typically much lower than their vacuum counterpart, and (b) at distances x3 far below the inverse temperature 1/T, the operator-product expansion guarantees the thermal correlator of two local currents to deviate from the vacuum correlator by a relative amount that is power-suppressed in (x3T). The method is first investigated in lattice perturbation theory, where we point out the appearance of an O(a2 log(1/a)) lattice artifact in the vacuum polarization with a prefactor that we calculate. It is then applied to non-perturbative lattice QCD data with two dynamical flavors of quarks. Our lattice spacings range down to 0.049 fm for the vacuum simulations and down to 0.033 fm for the simulations performed at a temperature of 250 MeV.

Axial UA(1) Anomaly: A New Mechanism to Generate Massless Bosons

Prior to the establishment of QCD as the correct theory describing hadronic physics, it was realized that the essential ingredients of the hadronic world at low energies are chiral symmetry and its spontaneous breaking. Spontaneous symmetry breaking is a non-perturbative phenomenon, and, thanks to massive QCD simulations on the lattice, we have at present a good understanding of the vacuum realization of the non-abelian chiral symmetry as a function of the physical temperature. As far as the UA(1) anomaly is concerned, and especially in the high temperature phase, the current situation is however far from satisfactory. The first part of this article is devoted to reviewing the present status of lattice calculations, in the high temperature phase of QCD, of quantities directly related to the UA(1) axial anomaly. In the second part, some recently suggested interesting physical implications of the UA(1) anomaly in systems where the non-abelian axial symmetry is fulfilled in the vacuum are analyzed. More precisely it is argued that, if the UA(1) symmetry remains effectively broken, the topological properties of the theory can be the basis of a mechanism, other than Goldstone’s theorem, to generate a rich spectrum of massless bosons at the chiral limit.

Meson screening masses in ( 2+1 )-flavor QCD

We present lattice QCD results for mesonic screening masses in the temperature range 140 MeV $\lesssim T \lesssim$ 2500 MeV. Our calculations were carried out using (2+1)-flavors of the Highly Improved Staggered Quark (HISQ) action, with a physical value for the strange quark mass and two values of the light quark mass corresponding to pion masses of 160 MeV and 140 MeV. Continuum-extrapolated results were obtained using calculations with a variety of lattice spacings corresponding to temporal lattice extents $N_\tau = 6 - 16$. We discuss the implications of these results for the effective restoration of various symmetries in the high temperature phase of QCD, as well as the approach toward the perturbative limit.

Meson spectral function and screening masses in magnetized quark gluon plasma

We calculate the spectral function in the pseudoscalar (scalar) channel in the high-temperature phase of QCD in the presence of a background magnetic field. The spatial and temporal screening masses are determined from the long-distance behavior of the corresponding correlation functions.

SU(2NF) symmetry of confinement in QCD and its observation at high temperature.

In this talk we first overview lattice results that have led to the observation of new SU(2)CS and SU(2NF) symmetries upon artificial truncation of the near-zero modes of the Dirac operator at zero temperatute and at high temperature without any truncation. These symmetries are larger than the chiral symmetry of the QCD Lagrangian and contain chiral symmetries SU(NF)L x SU(NF)R and U(1)A as subgroups. In addition to the standard chiral transformations the SU(2)CS and SU(2NF) transformations mix the right- and left-handed components of the quark fields. It is a symmetry of the confining chromo-electric interaction while the chromo-magnetic interaction manifestly breaks it. Emergence of these symmetries upon truncation of the near-zero modes of the Dirac operator at T=0 means that all effects of the chromo-magnetic interaction are located exclusively in the near-zero modes, while confining chromo-electric interaction is distributed among all modes. Appearance of these symmetries at high T, where the temperature suppresses the near-zero modes, has radical implications because these symmetries are incompatible with the asymptotically free deconfined quarks at increasing temperature. The elementary objects in the high-temperature phase of QCD should be quarks bound by the pure chromo-electric field that is not accompanied by the chromo-magnetic effects.

Topology in the SU(Nf) chiral symmetry restored phase of unquenched QCD and axion cosmology

We investigate the topological properties of unquenched QCD on the basis of numerical results of simulations at fixed topological charge, recently reported by Borsanyi et al. We demonstrate that their results for the mean value of the chiral condensate at fixed topological charge are inconsistent with the analytical prediction of the large-volume expansion around the saddle point, and argue that the most plausible explanation for the failure of the saddle-point expansion is a vacuum energy density that is $\ensuremath{\theta}$-independent at high temperatures, but surprisingly not too high $(T\ensuremath{\sim}2{T}_{c})$, a result which would imply a vanishing topological susceptibility and the absence of all physical effects of the $U(1)$ axial anomaly at these temperatures. We also show that under a general assumption concerning the high-temperature phase of QCD, where the $SU({N}_{f}{)}_{A}$ symmetry is restored, the analytical prediction for the chiral condensate at fixed topological charge is in very good agreement with the numerical results of Borsanyi et al., all effects of the axial anomaly should disappear, the topological susceptibility and all the $\ensuremath{\theta}$ derivatives of the vacuum energy density vanish, and the theory becomes $\ensuremath{\theta}$ independent at any $T>{T}_{c}$ in the infinite-volume limit.

Vector screening masses in the quark–gluon plasma and their physical significance

Static and non-static thermal screening states that couple to the conserved vector current are investigated in the high-temperature phase of QCD . Their masses and couplings to the current are determined at weak coupling, as well as using two-flavor lattice QCD simulations. A consistent picture emerges from the comparison, providing evidence that non-static Matsubara modes can indeed be treated perturbatively. We elaborate on the physical significance of the screening masses.

The QCD equation of state

Abstract The quark–gluon plasma (QGP), the deconfined high-temperature phase of QCD, is currently under extensive investigation in heavy-ion collision experiments at RHIC and LHC. The transition from the hadronic, low-temperature phase to the QGP is a rapid crossover, manifested by a significant change in bulk thermodynamic quantities. A fundamental characteristics of QCD is the equation of state, which is also an essential ingredient of hydrodynamic modeling of heavy-ion collisions. We report our final result [1] for the 2 + 1 flavor QCD equation of state in the continuum limit. We calculate the pressure, energy density and other thermodynamic quantities in the experimentally relevant temperature range 130–400 MeV. We use the highly improved staggered quark (HISQ) action with the Goldstone pion mass tuned to about 160 MeV in the continuum limit. To perform the continuum extrapolation we use lattices with temporal extent N τ = 6 , 8 , 10 and 12 .

Metastable states in quark-gluon plasma

We study the meta-stable states in high temperature phase of QCD characterised by nonzero expectation values for the imaginary part of the Polyakov loop. We consider $N_f= 2, 3$ dynamical staggered quarks, and carry out simulations at various values of the coupling $\beta$ to observe these states. In particular, we find the value of the coupling ($\beta_m$) above which the meta-stable states appear. The resulting value of $\beta_m$ corresponds to temperature $T_m \gtrsim 750$MeV for $N_f=2$.

The errant life of a heavy quark in the quark–gluon plasma

In the high-temperature phase of QCD, the heavy-quark momentum diffusion constant determines, via a fluctuation–dissipation relation, how fast a heavy quark kinetically equilibrates. This transport coefficient can be extracted from thermal correlators via a Kubo formula. We present a lattice calculation of the relevant Euclidean correlators in the gluon plasma, based on a recent formulation of the problem in heavy-quark effective field theory (HQET). We find a≈20% enhancement of the Euclidean correlator at maximal time separation as the temperature is lowered from 6Tc to 2Tc, pointing to stronger interactions at lower temperatures. At the same time, the correlator becomes flatter from 6Tc down to 2Tc, indicating a relative shift of the spectral weight to lower frequencies. A recent next-to-leading order perturbative calculation of the correlator agrees with the time dependence of the lattice data at the few-per cent level. We estimate how much additional contribution from the ω≲T region of the perturbative spectral function would be required to bring it in agreement with the lattice data at 3.1Tc.

Renormalized Polyakov loops in many representations

We present a renormalization procedure for Polyakov loops which explicitly implements the fact that the renormalization constant depends only on the ultraviolet cutoff. Using this we study the renormalized Polyakov loops in all representations up to the 27 of the gauge group SU(3). We find good evidence for Casimir scaling of the Polyakov loops and for approximate large-N factorization. By studying many loops together, we are able to show that there is a matrix model with a single coupling which can describe the high temperature phase of QCD, although it is hard to construct explicitly. We present the first results for the nonvanishing renormalized octet loop in the thermodynamic limit below the SU(3) phase transition, and estimate the associated string breaking distance and the gluelump binding energy. By studying the connection of the direct renormalization procedure with a generalization of an earlier suggestion which goes by the name of the QQ renormalization procedure, we find that they are functionally equivalent.

Theoretical overview: towards understanding the quark–gluon plasma

I give a brief overview of recent theoretical developments concerning the high temperature phase of QCD and the structure of hadronic wavefunctions at high energy.

Color screening and quark-quark interactions in finite temperature QCD

We analyze the screening of static diquark sources in 2-flavor QCD and compare results with the screening of static quark-antiquark pairs. We show that a two quark system in a fixed color representations is screened at short distances like a single quark source in the same color representation whereas at large distances the two quarks are screened independently. At high temperatures we observe that the relative strength of the interaction in diquark and quark-antiquark systems, respectively, obeys Casimir scaling. We use this result to examine the possible existence of heavy quark-quark bound states in the high temperature phase of QCD. We find support for the existence of $bb$ states up to about $2T_c$ while $cc$ states are unlikely to be formed above $T_c$.

High temperature phase of QCD

I give a brief overview of our present understanding of the high temperature phase of QCD, trying to clarify some of the theoretical issues involved in the current discussions that emphasize the strongly coupled character of the quark-gluon plasma produced at RHIC.

Properties of the Quark Gluon Plasma: A Lattice Perspective

We discuss results from lattice calculations for a few observables that are sensitive to different length scales in the high temperature phase of QCD and can give insight into its non-perturbative structure. We compare lattice results with perturbative calculations at high temperature obtained for vanishing and non-vanishing quark chemical potential.

Lattice QCD results on strangeness and quasi-quarks in heavy-ion collisions

Fluctuations of conserved quantities in heavy-ion collisions have been proposed as diagnostic tools for the nature of the produced phase. These can be related to the predictions of quark number susceptibilities (QNS) from lattice QCD. Using the diagonal QNS, we extracted the Wróblewski parameter in a dynamical QCD computation. Our results on the cross-correlations χBQ, χBY, χBS and χQY allow us to explore the charge and baryon number of objects that carry flavour. We present evidence that in the high-temperature phase of QCD the different flavour quantum numbers are excited in linkages which are exactly the same as one expects from quarks.

Fluctuations, strangeness, and quasiquarks in heavy-ion collisions from lattice QCD

We report measurements of diagonal susceptibilities for the baryon number, chi_B, electrical charge, chi_Q, third component of isospin, chi_I, strangeness, chi_S, and hypercharge, chi_Y, as well as the off-diagonal chi_BQ, chi_BY, chi_BS, etc. We show that the ratios of susceptibilities in the high temperature phase are robust variables, independent of lattice spacing, and therefore give predictions for experiments. We also investigate strangeness production and flavour symmetry breaking matrix elements at finite temperature. Finally, we present evidence that in the high temperature phase of QCD the different flavour quantum numbers are excited in linkages which are exactly the same as one expects from quarks. We present some investigations of these quark-like quasi particles.

Speed of sound and specific heat in the QCD plasma: Hydrodynamics, fluctuations, and conformal symmetry

We report the continuum limits of the speed of sound, c_s, and the specific heat at constant volume, c_v, in quenched QCD at temperatures of 2Tc and 3Tc. At these temperatures, c_s is within 2-sigma of the ideal gas value, whereas c_v differs significantly from the ideal gas. However, both are compatible with results expected in a theory with conformal symmetry. We investigate effective measures of conformal symmetry in the high temperature phase of QCD.

Testing the self-duality of topological lumps in SU(3) lattice gauge theory.

We discuss a simple formula which connects the field-strength tensor to a spectral sum over certain quadratic forms of the eigenvectors of the lattice Dirac operator. We analyze these terms for the near zero modes and find that they give rise to contributions which are essentially either self-dual or anti-self-dual. Modes with larger eigenvalues in the bulk of the spectrum are more dominated by quantum fluctuations and are less (anti-)self-dual. In the high temperature phase of QCD we find considerably reduced (anti-)self-duality for the modes near the edge of the spectral gap.