Hadronic fluctuations in the QGP

We analyze fluctuations of quark number and electric charge, in 2-flavour QCD at finite temperature and vanishing net baryon number density. In the hadronic phase we find that an enhancement of charge fluctuations arises from contributions of doubly charged hadrons to the thermodynamics. The rapid suppression of fluctuations seen in the high temperature phase suggests that in the QGP quark number and electric charge are predominantly carried by quasi-particles with the quantum numbers of quarks.Comment: 4 pages, 6 EPS-files, talk presented at Quark Matter 2005, Budapes

Spectral Properties of Quarks at Finite Temperature in Lattice QCD

We analyze the quark spectral function above and below the critical temperature for deconfinement and at finite momentum in quenched lattice QCD. It is found that the temporal quark correlation function in the deconfined phase near the critical temperature is well reproduced by a two-pole ansatz for the spectral function. The bare quark mass and momentum dependences of the spectral function are analyzed with this ansatz. In the chiral limit we find that even near the critical temperature the quark spectral function has two collective modes corresponding to the normal and plasmino excitations in the high temperature (T) limit. The pole mass of these modes at zero momentum, which should be identified to be the thermal mass of the quark, is approximately proportional to T in a rather wide range of T in the deconfined phase.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures - To appear in the conference proceedings for Quark Matter 2009, March 30 - April 4, Knoxville, Tennesse

Flavor and Quark Mass Dependence of QCD Thermodynamics

We calculate the transition temperature in 2 and 3-flavor QCD using improved gauge and staggered fermion actions on lattices with temporal extent Nt=4. We find Tc=173(8)MeV and 154(8)MeV for nf=2 and 3, respectively. In the case of 3-flavor QCD we present evidence that the chiral critical point, i.e. the second order endpoint of the line of first order chiral phase transitions, belongs to the universality class of the 3d Ising model.Comment: Talk given at Lattice 2000 (Finite Temperature), 4 pages, 6 EPS-figure

Hadron Resonance Mass Spectrum and Lattice QCD Thermodynamics

We confront lattice QCD results on the transition from the hadronic phase to the quark--gluon plasma with hadron resonance gas and percolation models. We argue that for T < T_c the equation of state derived from Monte--Carlo simulations of (2+1) quark--flavor QCD can be well described by a hadron resonance gas. We examine the quark mass dependence of the hadron spectrum on the lattice and discuss its description in terms of the MIT bag model. This is used to formulate a resonance gas model for arbitrary quark masses which can be compared to lattice calculations. We finally apply this model to analyze the quark mass dependence of the critical temperature obtained in lattice calculations. We show that the value of T_c for different quark masses agrees with lines of constant energy density in a hadron resonance gas. For large quark masses a corresponding contribution from a glueball resonance gas is required.Comment: 18 pages, LaTex2

Charmonium at finite temperature

We study charmoinum correlators and spectral functions at finite temperature within the quenched approximation using isotropic lattices with lattice spacing a^-1=4.86 GeV and 9.72 GeV. Although we observe some medium modifications of the ground state charmonium spectral function above deconfinement, we find that ground state charmonia (J/psi and eta_c) exist in the deconfined phase at least up to temperatures as high as 1.5Tc. P-wave charmonia (chi_c) on the other hand are dissociated already at 1.12Tc.Comment: Contribution to Lattice 2003 (non-zero) LaTeX, 3 pages, 3 figures, uses espcrc2 styl

Fluctuations of Goldstone modes and the chiral transition in QCD

We provide evidence for the influence of thermal fluctuations of Goldstone modes on the chiral condensate at finite temperature. We show that at fixed temperature, T<Tc, in the vicinity of the chiral transition temperature this leads to a characteristic dependence of the chiral condensate on the square root of the light quark mass (m_l), which is expected for 3-dimensional models with broken O(N) symmetry. As a consequence the chiral susceptibility shows a strong quark mass dependence for all temperatures below Tc and diverges like 1/sqrt(m_l) in the chiral limit.Comment: 4 pages,presented in Strong and ElectroWeak Matter, August 2008, Amsterdam, The Netherland

Thermodynamics of 2 and 3 flavour QCD

We discuss recent results on the thermodynamics of QCD in the presence of light dynamical quark degrees of freedom. In particular, we concentrate on an analysis of the flavour and quark mass dependence of the QCD phase diagram, the equation of state and the transition temperature. Moreover, we present recent results on the heavy quark free energy.Comment: 10 pages, To appear in the proceedings of QCD@Work: International Conference on QCD: Theory and Experiment, Martina Franca, Italy, 16-20 Jun 200

QCD thermodynamics in the crossover/freeze-out region

We use results from a 6-th order Taylor expansion of the QCD equation of state to construct expansions for cumulants of conserved charge fluctuations and their correlations. We show that these cumulants strongly constrain the range of applicability of hadron resonance gas model calculations. We point out that the latter is inappropriate to describe equilibrium properties of QCD at zero and non-zero values of the baryon chemical potential already at T~155 MeV.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures, contribution to the International Conference "Critical Point and Onset of Deconfinement 2016", Wroc{\l}aw, Poland, May 30th - June 4th, 201

The finite temperature transition for 3-flavour lattice QCD at finite isospin density

We simulate 3-flavour lattice QCD with a small chemical potential $\mu_I$ for isospin, at temperatures close to the finite temperature transition. Using quark masses just above the critical mass for zero chemical potential, we determine the position of the transition from hadronic matter to a quark-gluon plasma as a function of $\mu_I$. We see evidence for a critical endpoint where the transition changes from a crossover to a first-order transition as $\mu_I$ is increased. We argue that QCD at finite $\mu_I$ and QCD at finite quark-numberchemical potential $\mu$ should behave similarly in this region.Comment: 3 pages LaTex, 2 postscript figures. Parallel talk presented at Lattice 2004 (non-zero), Fermila

Lattice QCD at High Temperature and the QGP

We review recent progress in studies of bulk thermodynamics of strongly interacting matter, present results on the QCD equation of state and discuss the status of studies of the phase diagram at non-vanishing quark chemical potential.Comment: 9 pages, plenary talk given at PANIC05, Particles and Nuclei International Conference, Santa Fe, NM, Oct. 24-28, 200