Non-trivial Center Dominance in High Temperature QCD

We investigate the properties of quarks and gluons above the chiral phase transition temperature $T_c,$ using the RG improved gauge action and the Wilson quark action with two degenerate quarks mainly on a $32^3\times 16$ lattice. In the one-loop perturbation theory, the thermal ensemble is dominated by the gauge configurations with effectively $Z(3)$ center twisted boundary conditions, making the thermal expectation value of the spatial Polyakov loop take a non-trivial $Z(3)$ center. This is in agreement with our lattice simulation of high temperature QCD. We further observe that the temporal propagator of massless quarks at extremely high temperature $\beta=100.0 \, (T \simeq10^{58} T_c)$ remarkably agrees with the temporal propagator of free quarks with the $Z(3)$ twisted boundary condition for $t/L_t \geq 0.2$, but differs from that with the $Z(3)$ trivial boundary condition. As we increase the mass of quarks $m_q$, we find that the thermal ensemble continues to be dominated by the $Z(3)$ twisted gauge field configurations as long as $m_q \le 3.0 \, T$ and above that the $Z(3)$ trivial configurations come in. The transition is essentially identical to what we found in the departure from the conformal region in the zero-temperature many-flavor conformal QCD on a finite lattice by increasing the mass of quarks. We argue that the behavior is consistent with the renormalization group analysis at finite temperature.Comment: 16 pages, 9 figures; 4 tables, an appendix adde

IR fixed points in SU(3)SU(3) gauge Theories

We propose a novel RG method to specify the location of the IR fixed point in lattice gauge theories and apply it to the $SU(3)$ gauge theories with $N_f$ fundamental fermions. It is based on the scaling behavior of the propagator through the RG analysis with a finite IR cut-off, which we cannot remove in the conformal field theories in sharp contrast with the confining theories. The method also enables us to estimate the anomalous mass dimension in the continuum limit at the IR fixed point. We perform the program for $N_f=16, 12, 8$ and $N_f=7$ and indeed identify the location of the IR fixed points in all cases.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures, 1 table: the scale of the y axis in Figs..1-4 change; minor modifications as appear in PL

The Formation and Destruction of Molecular Clouds and Galactic Star Formation

We describe an overall picture of galactic-scale star formation. Recent high-resolution magneto-hydrodynamical simulations of two-fluid dynamics with cooling/heating and thermal conduction have shown that the formation of molecular clouds requires multiple episodes of supersonic compression. This finding enables us to create a scenario in which molecular clouds form in interacting shells or bubbles on a galactic scale. First we estimate the ensemble-averaged growth rate of molecular clouds over a timescale larger than a million years. Next we perform radiation hydrodynamics simulations to evaluate the destruction rate of magnetized molecular clouds by the stellar FUV radiation. We also investigate the resultant star formation efficiency within a cloud which amounts to a low value (a few percent) if we adopt the power-law exponent -2.5 for the mass distribution of stars in the cloud. We finally describe the time evolution of the mass function of molecular clouds over a long timescale (>1Myr) and discuss the steady state exponent of the power-law slope in various environments.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures. Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysic

Scaling Analysis of Improved Actions for Pure SU(3) Gauge Theory

We have explored the behaviour of some improved actions based on a nonperturbative renormalization group (RG) analysis in coupling space. We calculate the RG flow in two-coupling space (\boneone,\bonetwo) and examine the restoration of rotational invariance and the scaling of physical quantities $(T_c/\sqrt{\sigma})$.Comment: LATTICE98(improvement

Pole dynamics for the Flierl-Petviashvili equation and zonal flow

We use a systematic method which allows us to identify a class of exact solutions of the Flierl-Petvishvili equation. The solutions are periodic and have one dimensional geometry. We examine the physical properties and find that these structures can have a significant effect on the zonal flow generation.Comment: Latex 40 pages, seven figures eps included. Effect of variation of g_3 is studied. New references adde

Non-perturbative determination of anisotropy coefficients in lattice gauge theories

We propose a new non-perturbative method to compute derivatives of gauge coupling constants with respect to anisotropic lattice spacings (anisotropy coefficients), which are required in an evaluation of thermodynamic quantities from numerical simulations on the lattice. Our method is based on a precise measurement of the finite temperature deconfining transition curve in the lattice coupling parameter space extended to anisotropic lattices by applying the spectral density method. We test the method for the cases of SU(2) and SU(3) gauge theories at the deconfining transition point on lattices with the lattice size in the time direction $N_t=4$ -- 6. In both cases, there is a clear discrepancy between our results and perturbative values. A longstanding problem, when one uses the perturbative anisotropy coefficients, is a non-vanishing pressure gap at the deconfining transition point in the SU(3) gauge theory. Using our non-perturbative anisotropy coefficients, we find that this problem is completely resolved: we obtain $\Delta p/T^4 = 0.001(15)$ and $-0.003(17)$ on $N_t=4$ and 6 lattices, respectively.Comment: 24pages,7figures,5table

Conformal theories with an infrared cutoff

We give a new perspective on the dynamics of conformal theories realized in the SU(N) gauge theory, when the number of flavors N_f is within the conformal window. Motivated by the renormalization group argument on conformal theories with a finite IR cutoff Λ_IR, we conjecture that the propagator of a meson GH(t) on a lattice behaves at large t as a power-law corrected Yukawa-type decaying form G_(H)(t)=c˜^~_(H)exp(-m^~_(H)t)/t^(αH) instead of the exponentially decaying form c_(H)exp(-mHt), in the small quark mass region where m_H≤cΛ_IR: m_H is the mass of the ground state hadron in the channel H and c is a constant of order 1. The transition between the “conformal region” and the “confining region” is a first order transition. Our numerical results verify the predictions for the N_f=7 case and the N_f=16 case in the SU(3) gauge theory with the fundamental representation