Thermal QCD Research Articles

Bulk viscosity at extreme limits: from kinetic theory to strings

In this paper we study bulk viscosity in a thermal QCD model with large number of colors at two extreme limits: the very weak and the very strong ’t Hooft couplings. The weak coupling scenario is based on kinetic theory, and one may go to the very strong coupling dynamics via an intermediate coupling regime. Although the former has a clear description in terms of kinetic theory, the intermediate coupling regime, which uses lattice results, suffers from usual technical challenges that render an explicit determination of bulk viscosity somewhat difficult. On the other hand, the very strong ’t Hooft coupling dynamics may be studied using string theories at both weak and strong string couplings using gravity duals in type IIB as well as M-theory respectively. In type IIB we provide the precise fluctuation modes of the metric in the gravity dual responsible for bulk viscosity, compute the speed of sound in the medium and analyze the ratio of the bulk to shear viscosities. In M-theory, where we uplift the type IIA mirror dual of the UV complete type IIB model, we study and compare both the bulk viscosity and the sound speed by analyzing the quasi-normal modes in the system at strong IIA string coupling. By deriving the spectral function, we show the consistency of our results both for the actual values of the parameters involved as well for the bound on the ratio of bulk to shear viscosities.

Light D-wave axial-tensor K2(1820) meson at finite temperature

In this work the properties of the axial-tensor K2(1820) meson in a hot medium are investigated. The mass and the decay constant of this state are calculated via thermal QCD sum rules considering QCD condensates up to dimension five. Our analysis show that both mass and decay constant stay almost monotonous up to certain temperatures and then they diminish with increasing temperature. The mass and decay constant estimated at zero temperature are in good agreement with the present experimental data and theoretical estimations.

Two-loop perturbative corrections to the constrained effective potential in thermal QCD

In this paper, we compute the constrained QCD effective potential up to two-loop order with finite quark mass and chemical potential. We present the explicit calculations by using the double line notation and analytical expressions for massless quarks are obtained in terms of the Bernoulli polynomials or Polyakov loops. Our results explicitly show that the constrained QCD effective potential is independent on the gauge fixing parameter. In addition, as compared to the massless case, the constrained QCD effective potential with massive quarks develops a completely new term which is only absent when the background field vanishes. Furthermore, we discuss the relation between the one- and two- loop constrained effective potential. The surprisingly simple proportionality that exists in the pure gauge theories, however, is in general no longer true when fermions are taken into account. On the other hand, for high baryon density μB and low temperature T, in the massless limit, we do also find a similar proportionality between the one- and two-loop fermionic contributions in the constrained effective potential up to mathcal{O}left(T/{mu}_Bright) .

Hyperons in thermal QCD: A lattice view

The hadron resonance gas (HRG) is a widely used description of matter under extreme conditions, e.g. in the context of heavy-ion phenomenology. Commonly used implementations of the HRG employ vacuum hadron masses throughout the hadronic phase and hence do not include possible in-medium effects. Here we investigate this issue, using nonperturbative lattice simulations employing the FASTSUM anisotropic Nf=2+1 ensembles. We study the fate of octet and decuplet baryons as the temperature increases, focussing in particular on the positive- and negative-parity groundstates. While the positive-parity groundstate masses are indeed seen to be temperature independent, within the error, a strong temperature dependence is observed in the negative-parity channels. We give a simple parametrisation of this and formulate an in-medium HRG, which is particularly effective for hyperons. Parity doubling is seen to emerge in the deconfined phase at the level of correlators, with a noticeable effect of the heavier s quark. Channel dependence of this transition is analysed.

M-theory exotic scalar glueball decays to mesons at finite coupling

Using the pull-back of the perturbed type IIA metric corresponding to the perturbation of [1]’s M-theory uplift of [2]’s UV-complete top-down type IIB holographic dual of large-N thermal QCD, at finite coupling, we obtain the interaction Lagrangian corresponding to exotic scalar glueball(GE)-ρ/π-meson interaction, linear in the exotic scalar glueball and up to quartic order in the π mesons. In the Lagrangian the coupling constants are determined as (radial integrals of) [1]’s M-theory uplift’s metric components and six radial functions appearing in the M-theory metric perturbations. Assuming MG> 2Mρ, we then compute ρ → 2π, GE → 2π, 2ρ, ρ + 2π decay widths as well as the direct and indirect (mediated via ρ mesons) GE → 4π decays. For numerics, we choose f 0[1710] and compare with previous calculations. We emphasize that our results can be made to match PDG data (and improvements thereof) exactly by appropriate tuning of some constants of integration appearing in the solution of the M-theory metric perturbations and the ρ and π meson radial profile functions — a flexibility that our calculations permits.

The Mass and Residue of the Nucleon at Finite Temperature

In this study, we investigate the mass and residue of the nucleon at finite temperature in the framework of thermal QCD sum rule. In our calculations, we take into account the additional operators rising in the Wilson expansion at finite temperature. The numerical results show that the mass and residue of the nucleon are initially remain approximately stable up to T ≅ 150MeV , however after this point, they start to fall increasing the temperature.

Fluctuations and correlations in thermal QCD

We study the equation of state, fluctuations and static correlators of electric charge, baryon number and strangeness, by considering a realization of the Hadron Resonance Gas model in the light flavor sector of QCD. We emphasize the importance of these observables to study, within this approach, the possible existence of exotic and missing states in the hadron spectrum. Some preliminary results for the baryon spectrum have been obtained within a relativistic quark-diquark model, leading to an overall good agreement with the spectrum obtained with other quark models. Finally, it is conjectured, within the Hadron Resonance Gas approach, the existence of a singularity in the correlators at zero temperature, which turns out to be analogous to the divergence of the partition function at the Hagedorn temperature.

Soft thermal contributions to 3-loop gauge coupling

We analyze 3-loop contributions to the gauge coupling felt by ultrasoft (“magnetostatic”) modes in hot Yang-Mills theory. So-called soft/hard terms, originating from dimension-six operators within the soft effective theory, are shown to cancel 1097/1098 of the IR divergence found in a recent determination of the hard 3-loop contribution to the soft gauge coupling. The remaining 1/1098 originates from ultrasoft/hard contributions, induced by dimension-six operators in the ultrasoft effective theory. Soft 3-loop contributions are likewise computed, and are found to be IR divergent, rendering the ultrasoft gauge coupling non-perturbative at relative order mathcal{O}left({alpha}_{mathrm{s}}^{3/2}right) . We elaborate on the implications of these findings for effective theory studies of physical observables in thermal QCD.

Thermal properties of the exotic X(3872) state via QCD sum rule

In this work we investigate the $X(3872)$ meson with quantum numbers $J^{PC}=1^{++}$ in the framework of the thermal QCD sum rules method. We use a diquark-antidiquark current with the corresponding quantum numbers and calculate the two-point correlation function including contributions of non-perturbative condensates up to six dimensions. Analysis of the obtained thermal sum rule allows us to study contributions of a medium to the mass and coupling constant of the $X(3872)$ resonance. Our numerical calculations demonstrate that the mass and the meson-current coupling constant are insensitive to the variation of temperature up to $T=110\sim MeV$ , however after this point; they start to fall by increasing the temperature. At deconfinement temperature, the meson-current coupling constants attain roughly to $34\%$ of the vacuum value.

One-loop QCD thermodynamics in a strong homogeneous and static magnetic field

We have studied how the equation of state of thermal QCD with two light flavors is modified in a strong magnetic field. We calculate the thermodynamic observables of hot QCD matter up to one-loop, where the magnetic field affects mainly the quark contribution and the gluon part is largely unaffected except for the softening of the screening mass. We have first calculated the pressure of a thermal QCD medium in a strong magnetic field, where the pressure at fixed temperature increases with the magnetic field faster than the increase with the temperature at constant magnetic field. This can be understood from the dominant scale of thermal medium in the strong magnetic field, being the magnetic field, in the same way that the temperature dominates in a thermal medium in the absence of magnetic field. Thus although the presence of a strong magnetic field makes the pressure of hot QCD medium larger, the dependence of pressure on the temperature becomes less steep. Consistent with the above observations, the entropy density is found to decrease with the temperature in the presence of a strong magnetic field which is again consistent with the fact that the strong magnetic field restricts the dynamics of quarks to two dimensions, hence the phase space becomes squeezed resulting in the reduction of number of microstates. Moreover the energy density is seen to decrease and the speed of sound of thermal QCD medium increases in the presence of a strong magnetic field. These findings could have phenomenological implications in heavy ion collisions because the expansion dynamics of the medium produced in non-central ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions is effectively controlled by both the energy density and the speed of sound.

Heavy quark potential in a static and strong homogeneous magnetic field

We have investigated the properties of quarkonia in a thermal QCD medium in the background of strong magnetic field. For that purpose, we employ the Schwinger proper-time quark propagator in the lowest Landau level to calculate the one-loop gluon self-energy, which in the sequel gives the effective gluon propagator. As an artifact of strong magnetic field approximation (eB>>T^2 and eB>>m^2), the Debye mass for massless flavors is found to depend only on the magnetic field which is the dominant scale in comparison to the scales prevalent in the thermal medium. However, for physical quark masses, it depends on both magnetic field and temperature in a low temperature and high magnetic field but the temperature dependence is very meager and becomes independent of the temperature beyond a certain temperature and magnetic field. With the above mentioned ingredients, the potential between heavy quark (Q) and anti-quark (bar{Q}) is obtained in a hot QCD medium in the presence of a strong magnetic field by correcting both short- and long-range components of the potential in the real-time formalism. It is found that the long-range part of the quarkonium potential is affected much more by magnetic field as compared to the short-range part. This observation facilitates us to estimate the magnetic field beyond which the potential will be too weak to bind Qbar{Q} together. For example, the J/psi is dissociated at eB sim 10 m_pi ^2 and Upsilon is dissociated at eB sim 100 m_pi ^2 whereas its excited states, psi ^prime and Upsilon ^prime are dissociated at smaller magnetic field eB= m_pi ^2, 13 m_pi ^2, respectively.

Delocalized SYZ mirrors and confronting top\u2013down SU(3)-structure holographic meson masses at finite g and N_c with P(article) D(ata) G(roup) values

Meson spectroscopy at finite gauge coupling – whereat any perturbative QCD computation would break down – and finite number of colors, from a top–down holographic string model, has thus far been entirely missing in the literature. This paper fills this gap. Using the delocalized type IIA SYZ mirror (with SU(3) structure) of the holographic type IIB dual of large-N thermal QCD of Mia et al. (Nucl Phys B 839:187. arXiv:0902.1540 [hep-th], 2010) as constructed in Dhuria and Misra (JHEP 1311:001. arXiv:1306.4339 [hep-th], 2013) at finite coupling and number of colors (N_c = number of D5(overline{D5})-branes wrapping a vanishing two-cycle in the top–down holographic construct of Mia et al. (Nucl Phys B 839:187. arXiv:0902.1540 [hep-th], 2010) = mathcal{O}(1) in the IR in the MQGP limit of Dhuria and Misra (JHEP 1311:001. arXiv:1306.4339 [hep-th], 2013) at the end of a Seiberg-duality cascade), we obtain analytical (not just numerical) expressions for the vector and scalar meson spectra and compare our results with previous calculations of Sakai and Sugimoto (Prog Theor Phys 113:843. doi:10.1143/PTP.113.843. arXiv:hep-th/0412141, 2005) and Dasgupta et al. (JHEP 1507:122. doi:10.1007/JHEP07(2015)122. arXiv:1409.0559 [hep-th], 2015), and we obtain a closer match with the Particle Data Group (PDG) results of Olive et al. (Particle Data Group) (Chin Phys C 38:090001, 2014). Through explicit computations, we verify that the vector and scalar meson spectra obtained by the gravity dual with a black hole for all temperatures (small and large) are nearly isospectral with the spectra obtained by a thermal gravity dual valid for only low temperatures; the isospectrality is much closer for vector mesons than scalar mesons. The black-hole gravity dual (with a horizon radius smaller than the deconfinement scale) also provides the expected large-N suppressed decrease in vector meson mass with increase of temperature.

Effective Field Theory Models for Thermal QCD

We present an effective field theory model for QCD at finite temperature with quarks. We discuss the mean field theory, the fixing of parameters, and a prediction for the curvature of the critical line. We proceed to write down a pionic theory of fluctuations around the mean field, and discuss how the parameters of this pionic effective theory descend from the model with quarks.

Phenomenological QCD equations of state for neutron star mergers

Thermal QCD equations of state at high baryon density are sensitive to the phase structure and the resulting excitation modes. The leading contribution at low temperature can be either ∼pF2T2 (pF: quark Fermi momentum; T: temperature) for phases with gapless quarks, or ∼T4 for phases with gapped quarks. In the latter the thermal pressure is dominated by collective modes. Starting with a schematic quark model developed for neutron star structure, we estimate the thermal contributions and zero point energy from the Nambu-Goldstone modes by building them upon the mean field background for the color-flavor-locked quark matter. Applying the phase shift representation for thermodynamic potentials, we include not only the bound state pairs but also resonating pairs. According to the Levinson's theorem, the high energy contributions tend to cancel the pole contributions to the thermodynamics, tempering the UV behaviors in the zero point energy. Our primary target in this talk is the domain with baryon density nB as large as ∼5–10n0 (n0≃0.16fm−3: nuclear saturation density), and the temperature T of the order ∼30–100MeV. The insights into this domain may be obtained through the future detection of gravitational waves from neutron star merging events.

High statistics study of in-medium S- and P-wave quarkonium states in lattice Non-relativistic QCD

Many measurements of quarkonium suppression at the LHC, e.g. the nuclear modification factor RAA of J/Ψ, are well described by a multitude of different models. Thus pinpointing the underlying physics aspects is difficult and guidance based on first principles is needed. Here we present the current status of our ongoing high precision study of in-medium spectral properties of both bottomonium and charmonium based on NRQCD on the lattice. This effective field theory allows us to capture the physics of quarkonium without modeling assumptions in a thermal QCD medium. In our study a first principles and realistic description of the QCD medium is provided by state-of-the-art lattices of the HotQCD collaboration at almost physical pion mass. Our updated results corroborate a picture of sequential modification of states with respect to their vacuum binding energy. Using a novel low-gain variant of the Bayesian BR method for reconstructing spectral functions we find that remnant features of the Upsilon may survive up to T ∼ 400MeV, while the χb signal disappears around T ∼ 270MeV. The cc‾ analysis hints at melting of χc below T ∼ 190MeV while some J/Ψ remnant feature might survive up to T ∼ 245MeV. An improved understanding of the numerical artifacts in the Bayesian approach and the availability of increased statistics have made possible a first quantitative study of the in-medium ground state masses, which tend to lower values as T increases, consistent with lattice potential based studies.

Renormalization group flow, stability, and bulk viscosity in a large N thermal QCD model

The ultraviolet completion of a large N QCD model requires introducing new degrees of freedom at certain scale so that the UV behavior may become asymptotically conformal with no Landau poles and no UV divergences of Wilson loops. These UV degrees of freedom are represented by certain anti-branes arranged on the blown-up sphere of a warped resolved conifold in a way that they are separated from the other set of branes that control the IR behavior of the theory. This separation of the branes and the anti-branes creates instability in the theory. Further complications arise from the curvature of the ambient space. We show that, despite these analytical hurdles, stability may still be achieved by switching on appropriate world-volume fluxes on the branes. The UV degrees of freedom, on the other hand, modify the RG flow in the model. We discuss this in details by evaluating the flow from IR confining to UV conformal. Finally we lay down a calculational scheme to study bulk viscosity which, in turn, would signal the inherent non-conformality in this model.

Scale Invariant Resummed Thermal Perturbative Expansions

We illustrate how our recently developed renormalization group optimized perturbation (RGOPT) efficiently resums perturbative expansions in thermal field theories. The residual renormalization scale dependence of optimized thermodynamical quantities is drastically improved as compared to either standard perturbative expansions, or related methods such as the screened perturbation or (resummed) hard-thermal-loop perturbation. Our approach is illustrated briefly for the nonlinear sigma model, as a toy model for thermal QCD. Finally, preliminary applications of RGOPT to hard thermal loop resummation for the QCD pressure are sketched.

Quenching parameter in a holographic thermal QCD

We have calculated the quenching parameter, qˆ in a model-independent way using the gauge–gravity duality. In earlier calculations, the geometry in the gravity side at finite temperature was usually taken as the pure AdS black hole metric for which the dual gauge theory becomes conformally invariant unlike QCD. Therefore we use a metric which incorporates the fundamental quarks by embedding the coincident D7 branes in the Klebanov–Tseytlin background and a finite temperature is switched on by inserting a black hole into the background, known as OKS-BH metric. Further inclusion of an additional UV cap to the metric prepares the dual gauge theory to run similar to thermal QCD. Moreover qˆ is usually defined in the literature from the Glauber model perturbative QCD evaluation of the Wilson loop, which has no reasons to hold if the coupling is large and is thus against the main idea of gauge–gravity duality. Thus we use an appropriate definition of qˆ: qˆL−=1/L2, where L is the separation for which the Wilson loop is equal to some specific value. The above two refinements cause qˆ to vary with the temperature as T4 always and to depend linearly on the light-cone time L− with an additional (1/L−) correction term in the short-distance limit whereas in the long-distance limit, qˆ depends only linearly on L− with no correction term. These observations agree with other holographic calculations directly or indirectly.

Determination of the temperature dependence of the up- and down-quark masses in QCD

The temperature dependence of the sum of the QCD up- and down-quark masses, (mu[Formula: see text]+[Formula: see text]md) and the pion decay constant, f[Formula: see text], are determined from two thermal finite energy QCD sum rules for the pseudoscalar-current correlator. This quark mass remains mostly constant for temperatures well below the critical temperature for deconfinement/chiral-symmetry restoration. As this critical temperature is approached, the quark mass increases sharply with increasing temperature. This increase is far more pronounced if the temperature dependence of the pion mass (determined independently from other methods) is taken into account. The behavior of f[Formula: see text](T) is consistent with the expectation from chiral symmetry, i.e. that it should follow the thermal dependence of the quark condensate, independently of the quark mass.

New insights into properties of large-N holographic thermal QCD at finite gauge coupling at (the non-conformal/next-to) leading order in N

It is believed that large-N thermal QCD laboratories like strongly coupled QGP (sQGP) require not only a large ‘t Hooft coupling but also a finite gauge coupling (Natsuume, String theory and quark–gluon plasma. arXiv:hep-ph/0701201 , 2007). Unlike almost all top–down holographic models in the literature, holographic large-N thermal QCD models, based on this assumption, therefore necessarily require addressing this limit from M-theory. This was initiated in Dhuria and Misra (JHEP 1311:001, 2013) which presented a local M-theory uplift of the string theoretic dual of large-N thermal QCD-like theories at finite gauge/string coupling of Mia et al. (Nucl. Phys. B 839:187, arXiv:0902.1540 [hep-th], 2010) ( $$g_s\mathop {<}\limits ^{\sim }1$$ as part of the ‘MQGP’ limit of Dhuria and Misra in JHEP 1311:001, arXiv:1306.4339 [hep-th], 2013). Understanding and classifying the properties of systems like sQGP from a top–down holographic model, assuming a finite gauge coupling, have been entirely missing in the literature. In this paper we largely address the following two non-trivial issues pertaining to the same. First, up to LO in N (the number of D3-branes), by calculating the temperature dependence of the thermal (and electrical) conductivity and the consequent deviation from the Wiedemann–Franz law, upon comparison with Garg et al. (Phys. Rev. Lett. 103:096402, 2009), we show that, remarkably, the results qualitatively mimic a 1+1-dimensional Luttinger liquid with impurities. Second, by looking at, respectively, the scalar, vector, and tensor modes of metric perturbations and using the prescription of Kovtun and Starinets (Phys. Rev. D 72:086009, arXiv:hep-th/0506184 , 2005) for constructing appropriate gauge-invariant perturbations, we obtain the non-conformal corrections to the conformal results (but at finite $$g_s$$ ), respectively, for the speed of sound, the shear mode diffusion constant, and the shear viscosity $$\eta $$ (and $$\frac{\eta }{s}$$ ). The new insight gained is that it turns out that these corrections show a partial universality in the sense that at NLO in N the same are given by the product of $$\frac{(g_s M^2)}{N}\ll 1$$ and $$g_s N_f\sim \mathcal{O}(1)$$ , $$N_f$$ being the number of flavor D7-branes and M the number of fractional D3-branes = the number of colors = 3 in the IR after the end of a Seiberg-duality cascade. On the mathematics side, using the results of Ionel and Min-OO (Ill. J. Math. 52, 2008), at LO in N we finish our argument of Dhuria and Misra (Eur. Phys. J. C 75:16, 2015) and show that for a predominantly resolved (resolution > deformation – this paper) or deformed (deformation > resolution – Dhuria and Misra in Eur Phys J C 75(1):16, arXiv:1406.6076 [hep-th], 2015) resolved warped deformed conifold, the local $$T^3$$ of Dhuria and Misra (JHEP 1311:001, arXiv:1306.4339 [hep-th], 2013) in the MQGP limit is the $$T^2$$ -invariant special Lagrangian three-cycle of Ionel and Min-OO (Ill J Math 52(3), 2008) justifying the construction in Dhuria and Misra (JHEP 1311:001, arXiv:1306.4339 [hep-th], 2013) of the delocalized Strominger–Yau–Zaslow Type IIA mirror of the Type IIB background of Mia et al. (Nucl Phys B 839:187, arXiv:0902.1540 [hep-th], 2010).