Nuclear Force from Monte Carlo Simulations of Lattice Quantum Chromodynamics

The nuclear force acting between protons and neutrons is studied in the Monte Carlo simulations of the fundamental theory of the strong interaction, the quantum chromodynamics defined on the hypercubic space-time lattice. After a brief summary of the empirical nucleon-nucleon (NN) potentials which can fit the NN scattering experiments in high precision, we outline the basic formulation to derive the potential between the extended objects such as the nucleons composed of quarks. The equal-time Bethe-Salpeter amplitude is a key ingredient for defining the NN potential on the lattice. We show the results of the numerical simulations on a $32^4$ lattice with the lattice spacing $a \simeq 0.137$fm (lattice volume (4.4 fm)$^4$) in the quenched approximation. The calculation was carried out using the massively parallel computer Blue Gene/L at KEK. We found that the calculated NN potential at low energy has basic features expected from the empirical NN potentials; attraction at long and medium distances and the repulsive core at short distance. Various future directions along this line of research are also summarized.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, version accepted for publication in "Computational Science & Discovery" (IOP

Static quark free energies at finite temperature with two flavors of improved Wilson quarks

Polyakov loop correlations at finite temperature in two-flavor QCD are studied in lattice simulations with the RG-improved gluon action and the clover-improved Wilson quark action. From the simulations on a $16^3 \times 4$ lattice, we extract the free energies, the effective running coupling $g_{\rm eff}(T)$ and the Debye screening mass $m_D(T)$ for various color channels of heavy quark--quark and quark--anti-quark pairs above the critical temperature. The free energies are well approximated by the screened Coulomb form with the appropriate Casimir factors. The magnitude and the temperature dependence of the Debye mass are compared to those of the next-to-leading order thermal perturbation theory and to a phenomenological formula given in terms of $g_{\rm eff}(T)$. Also we made a comparison between our results with the Wilson quark and those with the staggered quark previously reported.Comment: 7 pages, 9 figures, talk given at Lattice 2006 (high temperature and density

Nuclear Force from Lattice QCD

The first lattice QCD result on the nuclear force (the NN potential) is presented in the quenched level. The standard Wilson gauge action and the standard Wilson quark action are employed on the lattice of the size 16^3\times 24 with the gauge coupling beta=5.7 and the hopping parameter kappa=0.1665. To obtain the NN potential, we adopt a method recently proposed by CP-PACS collaboration to study the pi pi scattering phase shift. It turns out that this method provides the NN potentials which are faithful to those obtained in the analysis of NN scattering data. By identifying the equal-time Bethe-Salpeter wave function with the Schroedinger wave function for the two nucleon system, the NN potential is reconstructed so that the wave function satisfies the time-independent Schroedinger equation. In this report, we restrict ourselves to the J^P=0^+ and I=1 channel, which enables us to pick up unambiguously the ``central'' NN potential V_{central}(r). The resulting potential is seen to posses a clear repulsive core of about 500 MeV at short distance (r < 0.5 fm). Although the attraction in the intermediate and long distance regions is still missing in the present lattice set-up, our method is appeared to be quite promising in reconstructing the NN potential with lattice QCD.Comment: A talk given at the XXIV International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory (Lattice2006), Tucson, Arizona, USA, July 23-28, 2006, 3 figures, 7page

Finite temperature phase transition of two-flavor QCD with an improved Wilson quark action

We study the phase structure of QCD at finite temperatures with two flavors of dynamical quarks on a lattice with the size $N_s^3 \times N_t=16^3 \times 4$, using a renormalization group improved gauge action and a clover improved Wilson quark action. The simulations are made along the lines of constant physics determined in terms of $m_{\rm PS}/m_{\rm V}$ at zero-temperature. We show preliminary results for the spatial string tension in the high temperature phase.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures, talk presented at Lattice 2006 (high temperature and density

Thermodynamics and heavy-quark free energies at finite temperature and density with two flavors of improved Wilson quarks

Thermodynamics of two-flavor QCD at finite temperature and density is studied on a $16^3 \times 4$ lattice, using a renormalization group improved gauge action and the clover improved Wilson quark action. In the simulations along lines of constant $m_{\rm PS}/m_{\rm V}$, we calculate the Taylor expansion coefficients of the heavy-quark free energy with respect to the quark chemical potential ($\mu_q$) up to the second order. By comparing the expansion coefficients of the free energies between quark($Q$)and antiquark($\bar{Q}$), and between $Q$ and $Q$, we find a characteristic difference at finite $\mu_q$ due to the first order coefficient of the Taylor expansion. We also calculate the quark number and isospin susceptibilities, and find that the second order coefficient of the quark number susceptibility shows enhancement around the pseudo-critical temperature.Comment: Talk given at the XXV International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory (Lattice 2007), July 30 - August 4, 2007, Regensburg, German

Heavy-Quark Free Energy, Debye Mass, and Spatial String Tension at Finite Temperature in Two Flavor Lattice QCD with Wilson Quark Action

We study Polyakov loop correlations and spatial Wilson loop at finite Temperature in two-flavor QCD simulations with the RG-improved gluon action and the clover-improved Wilson quark action on a $16^3 \times 4$ lattice. From the line of constant physics at $m_{\rm PS}/m_{\rm V}=0.65$ and 0.80, we extract the heavy-quark free energies, the effective running coupling $g_{\rm eff}(T)$ and the Debye screening mass $m_D(T)$ for various color channels of heavy quark--quark and quark--anti-quark pairs above the critical temperature. The free energies are well approximated by the screened Coulomb form with the appropriate Casimir factors at high temperature. The magnitude and the temperature dependence of the Debye mass are compared to those of the next-to-leading order thermal perturbation theory and to a phenomenological formula in terms of $g_{\rm eff}(T)$. We make a comparison between our results with the Wilson quark action and the previous results with the staggered quark action. The spatial string tension is also studied in the high temperature phase and is compared to the next-to-next-leading order prediction in an effective theory with dimensional reduction.Comment: 25 pages, 37 EPS figure

Equation of state at finite density in two-flavor QCD with improved Wilson quarks

We study the equation of state in two-flavor QCD at finite temperature and density. Simulations are made with the RG-improved gluon action and the clover-improved Wilson quark action. Along the lines of constant physics for $m_{\rm PS}/m_{\rm V} = 0.65$ and 0.80, we compute the derivatives of the quark determinant with respect to the quark chemical potential $\mu_q$ up to the fourth order at $\mu_q=0$. We adopt several improvement techniques in the evaluation. We study thermodynamic quantities and quark number susceptibilities at finite $\mu_q$ using these derivatives. We find enhancement of the quark number susceptibility at finite $\mu_q$, in accordance with previous observations using staggered-type quarks. This suggests the existence of a nearby critical point.Comment: 7 pages, 16 figures, presented at the XXVI International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory (LATTICE 2008), July 14-19, 2008, Williamsburg, Virginia, US