Worldline Monte Carlo for fermion models at large N_f

Strongly-coupled fermionic systems can support a variety of low-energy phenomena, giving rise to collective condensation, symmetry breaking and a rich phase structure. We explore the potential of worldline Monte Carlo methods for analyzing the effective action of fermionic systems at large flavor number N_f, using the Gross-Neveu model as an example. Since the worldline Monte Carlo approach does not require a discretized spacetime, fermion doubling problems are absent, and chiral symmetry can manifestly be maintained. As a particular advantage, fluctuations in general inhomogeneous condensates can conveniently be dealt with analytically or numerically, while the renormalization can always be uniquely performed analytically. We also critically examine the limitations of a straightforward implementation of the algorithms, identifying potential convergence problems in the presence of fermionic zero modes as well as in the high-density region.Comment: 40 pages, 13 figure

Shear viscosity of the Quark-Gluon Plasma from a virial expansion

We calculate the shear viscosity $\eta$ in the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) phase within a virial expansion approach with particular interest in the ratio of $\eta$ to the entropy density $s$, i.e. $\eta/s$. The virial expansion approach allows us to include the interactions between the partons in the deconfined phase and to evaluate the corrections to a single-particle partition function. In the latter approach we start with an effective interaction with parameters fixed to reproduce thermodynamical quantities of QCD such as energy and/or entropy density. We also directly extract the effective coupling \ga_{\rm V} for the determination of $\eta$. Our numerical results give a ratio $\eta/s\approx 0.097$ at the critical temperature $T_{\rm c}$, which is very close to the theoretical bound of $1/(4\pi)$. Furthermore, for temperatures $T\leq 1.8 T_{\rm c}$ the ratio $\eta/s$ is in the range of the present experimental estimates $0.1-0.3$ at RHIC. When combining our results for $\eta/s$ in the deconfined phase with those from chiral perturbation theory or the resonance gas model in the confined phase we observe a pronounced minimum of $\eta/s$ close to the critical temperature $T_{\rm c}$.Comment: Published in Eur. Phys. J. C, 7 pages, 2 figures, 3 tabl

Hydrodynamic Modeling and the QGP Shear Viscosity

In this article, we will briefly review the recent progress on hydrodynamic modeling and the extraction of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) specific shear viscosity with an emphasis on results obtained from the hybrid model VISHNU that couples viscous hydrodynamics for the macroscopic expansion of the QGP to the hadron cascade model for the microscopic evolution of the late hadronic stage.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, EPJA: Topical issue on "Relativistic Hydro- and Thermodynamics