Susceptibilities, the Specific Heat and a Cumulant in Two-Flavour QCD

We study the quark mass dependence of various response functions, which contribute to chiral susceptibilities and the specific heat in the staggered fermion formulation of two-flavour QCD. This yields information about the critical exponents $\alpha$, $\beta$ and $\delta$. In the case of the chiral susceptibility, obtained as derivative of the chiral order parameter with respect to the quark mass, we calculate all contributions. This allows to construct a cumulant of the order parameter, which is a scaling function and yields a direct determination of the critical exponent $\delta$. All our results are consistent with a second order phase transition.Comment: 16 pages (TeX file) + 7 figures (appended as ps-files), uuencoded, Bielefeld preprint, BI-TP 94/29, June 199

Dynamical simulations of QCD at finite temperature with a truncated perfect action

The Hypercube operator determines a variant of the approximate, truncated perfect fermion action. In this pilot study we are going to report on first experiences in dynamical QCD simulations with the Hypercube fermions. We apply this formulation in an investigation of the finite temperature transition for two flavours. On lattices of size $8^3\times 4$ we explore the phase diagram. Physical scales are estimated from pseudoscalar and vector meson masses obtained on $8^3\times 16$ lattices. We observe the presence of a metastability region but do not find evidence for an Aoki phase. The Hypercube operator allows us to simulate at ratios of pseudoscalar to vector meson masses at least as small as 0.8 at the thermal crossover at $N_t=4$, which renders this formulation cheaper than the Wilson like fermions.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figures, talk presented at Lattice 2006 (High temperature and density

Thermodynamics and in-medium hadron properties from lattice QCD

Non-perturbative studies of the thermodynamics of strongly interacting elementary particles within the context of lattice regularized QCD are being reviewed. After a short introduction into thermal QCD on the lattice we report on the present status of investigations of bulk properties. In particular, we discuss the present knowledge of the phase diagram including recent developments of QCD at non-zero baryon number density. We continue with the results obtained so far for the transition temperature as well as the temperature dependence of energy and pressure and comment on screening and the heavy quark free energies. A major section is devoted to the discussion of thermal modifications of hadron properties, taking special account of recent progress through the use of the maximum entropy method.Comment: prepared for "Quark-Gluon Plasma III", R.Hwa (ed.

Further Evidence for an unstable H-Dibaryon?

We present preliminary results for the mass of the 6q flavor-singlet state ($J^P=0^+$, $S=-2$) called H-dibaryon, calculated in quenched QCD on $16^3$x30 and $24^3$x30 lattices with improved gauge and fermion actions (Symanzik improvement, Clover action). For both lattice sizes we applied the fuzzing technique to enhance the overlap with the ground state. We observe a H-mass above the $\Lambda\Lambda$ threshold for strong decay. The difference in mass, $m_H - 2m_\Lambda$, increases with increasing lattice size.Comment: Poster at LATTICE99 (QCD Spectrum and Quark Masses), 3 pages, 4 figures, LaTeX2e using espcrc2.st

Deconfinement Through Chiral Transition In 2 Flavour QCD

We propose that in QCD with dynamical quarks, colour deconfinement occurs when an external field induced by the chiral condensate strongly aligns the Polyakov loop. This effect sets in at the chiral symmetry restoration temperature $T_{\chi}$ and thus makes deconfinement and chiral symmetry restoration coincide. The predicted singular behavior of Polyakov loop susceptibilities at $T_{\chi}$ is shown to be supported by finite temperature lattice calculations.Comment: Talk given at Lattice 2000 (Finite Temperature), 4 pages, 6 EPS-figure

Quark Mass and Flavour Dependence of the QCD Phase Transition

We analyze the quark mass and flavour dependence of the QCD phase transition temperature. When the lightest pseudo-scalar meson mass (m_PS) is larger than 2 GeV the critical temperature is controlled by the gluonic sector of QCD alone. For smaller values of the lightest meson mass the pseudo-critical temperature decreases slowly with m_PS. For a large regime of meson masses the pseudo-critical temperature of 2-flavour QCD is about 10% larger than in the 3-flavour case. On lattices with temporal extent N_t=4 an extrapolation to the chiral limit yields T_c = 173(8) MeV and 154(8) MeV for 2 and 3-flavour QCD, respectively. We also analyze dynamical quark mass effects on the screening of the heavy quark potential. A detailed analysis of the heavy quark free energy in 3-flavour QCD shows that close to T_c screening effects are approximately quark mass independent already for pseudo-scalar meson masses m_PS = 800 MeV and screening sets in at distances r = 0.3 fm.Comment: 25 pages, LaTeX2e File, 11 EPS-file

Deconfinement through Chiral Symmetry Restoration in Two-Flavour QCD

We propose that in QCD with dynamical quarks, colour deconfinement occurs when an external field induced by the chiral condensate strongly aligns the Polyakov loop. This effect sets in at the chiral symmetry restoration temperature T-chi and thus makes deconfinement and chiral symmetry restoration coincide. The predicted singular behaviour of Polyakov loop susceptibilities at T-chi is shown to be supported by finite temperature lattice calculations.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure

Study of finite temperature QCD with 2+1 flavors via Taylor expansion and imaginary chemical potential

We study QCD with 2+1 flavors at nonzero temperature and nonzero chemical potential. We present preliminary results obtained from lattice calculations performed with an improved staggered fermions action (p4-action) on lattice with temporal extent N_t = 4 on a line of constant physics with the strange quark mass adjusted to its physical value and a pion mass of about 220 MeV. We compute at imaginary chemical potential and compare with Taylor expansion results. We focus our study on a range of temperatures 0.94 < T/T_c < 1.08.Comment: 7 pages, 12 figures, talk presented at the XXVIII International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory (Lattice 2010), June 14-19, 2010, Villasimius, Sardinia, Ital