Results from Lattice QCD

I present our recent results on the critical end point in the \mu_B-T phase diagram of QCD with two flavours of light dynamical quarks and compare them with similar results from other groups. Implications for a possible energy scan at the RHIC are discussed. I also comment briefly on the new results of great relevance to heavy ion collisions from finite temperature lattice QCD simulations on speed of sound, specific heat and on the fate of J/\psi.Comment: Invited Plenary Talk given at 5th International Conference on Physics and Astrophysics of Quark Gluon Plasma, Kolkata, India, February 8-12, 2005; LaTeX in Journal of Physics G style; 9 pages including figure

Present Status of Lattice QCD at nonzero T and \mu

I review a few selected topics in Lattice Quantum Chromo Dynamics, focusing more on the recent results. These include i) the equation of state and speed of sound, ii) J/\psi suppression, iii) flavour correlations and iv) the QCD phase diagram in the \mu-T plane.Comment: 13 Pages including figures, Plenary Talk at the 9th Workshop on High Energy Physics Phenomenology, ``WHEPP9'', Bhubaneswar, India, January 3-14, 2006, To appear in Praman

Towards QCD thermodynamics using exact chiral symmetry on lattice

The thermodynamics of massless ideal gas of overlap quarks has been investigated numerically for both zero and nonzero baryon chemical potential $\mu$. While the parameter M has been shown to be irrelevant in the continuum limit, it is shown numerically that the continuum limit can be reached with relatively coarser lattices for certain range of M. Numerical limitation of the existing method of introduction of chemical potential in the overlap formalism is discussed. We have also studied the energy density of free domain wall fermions in the absence of $\mu$ and estimated the extent of lattice in the fifth dimension $L_5$ for which the overlap results are recovered. Interestingly, this value of $L_5$ is also minimum for the same range of M found in the overlap case.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, to appear in the proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Ultra-Relativistic Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions: Quark Matter 2008 (QM2008

The critical end point of QCD

We investigate the critical end point of QCD with two flavours of light dynamical quarks at finite lattice cutoff a=1/4T using a Taylor expansion of the baryon number susceptibility. We find a strong volume dependence of the position of the critical end point. In the large volume limit we obtain T^E/T_c \~ 0.95 and mu_B^E/T^E ~ 1.1, where T_c is the cross over temperature at zero chemical potential, and T^E and mu_B^E are the temperature and the baryon chemical potential at the critical end point. The small value of mu_B^E places it in the range of observability in energy scans at the RHIC.Comment: this version contains all the figures that appear in the published journal versio

Screening correlators with chiral Fermions

We study screening correlators of quark-antiquark composites at T=2T_c, where T_c is the QCD phase transition temperature, using overlap quarks in the quenched approximation of lattice QCD. As the lattice spacing is changed from 1/4T to a=1/6T and 1/8T, we find that screening correlators change little, in contrast with the situation for other types of lattice fermions. All correlators are close to the ideal gas prediction at small separations. The long distance falloff is clearly exponential, showing that a parametrization by a single screening length is possible at distances z > 1/T. The correlator corresponding to the thermal vector is close to the ideal gas value at all distances, whereas that for the thermal scalar deviates at large distances. This is examined through the screening lengths and momentum space correlators. There is strong evidence that the screening transfer matrix does not have reflection positivity.Comment: 10 pages, 9 fig

Fermions obstruct dimensional reduction in hot QCD

We have studied, for the first time, screening masses obtained from glueball-like correlators in Quantum Chromodynamics with four light dynamical flavours of quarks in the temperature range 1.5T_c < T < 3T_c, where T_c is the temperature at which the chiral transition occurs. We have also studied pion-like and sigma-like screening masses, and found that they are degenerate in the entire range of T. These obstruct perturbative dimensional reduction since the lowest glueball screening mass is heavier than them. Extrapolation of our results suggests that this obstruction may affect the entire range of temperature expected to be reached even at the Large Hadron Collider.Comment: 4 pages RevTeX, 2 eps figures included; minor corrections: version for publicatio

The Deconfinement Transition in SO(3) Gauge Theory

The SO(3) lattice gauge theory with a Villain form of action was investigated by Monte Carlo techniques on asymmetric lattices with Nt = 2 and 4, where Nt is the number of sites in the temporal extent. Unlike the results for higher Nt, only one transition of second order was found for Nt = 2 . An extended action with an irrelevant term to suppress Z_2 monopoles enabled us to get a better view of the deconfinement transition as the effects of bulk transition could be suppressed as well. Although the action has no global Z_2 symmetry for the SO(3) theory, unlike the SU(2) theory at finite temperature, our study revealed a second order deconfinement transition, with properties similar to the deconfinement transition of SU(2).Comment: 19 pages latex, incl. figure

The critical end point in QCD

In this talk I present the logic behind, and examine the reliability of, estimates of the critical end point (CEP) of QCD using the Taylor expansion method.Comment: Plenary talk at SEWM 06 by S

Thermodynamics of free Domain Wall fermions

Studying various thermodynamic quantities for the free domain wall fermions for both finite and infinite fifth dimensional extent N_5, we find that the lattice corrections are minimum for $N_T\geq10$ for both energy density and susceptibility, for its irrelevant parameter M in the range 1.45-1.50. The correction terms are, however, quite large for small lattice sizes of $N_T\leq8$. We propose modifications of the domain wall operator, as well as the overlap operator, to reduce the finite cut-off effects to within 10% of the continuum results of the thermodynamic quantities for the currently used N_T=6-8 lattices. Incorporating chemical potential, we show that \mu^2 divergences are absent for a large class of such domain wall fermion actions although the chiral symmetry is broken for $\mu\neq0$.Comment: 11 pages, 15 figures include