In Medium Hadron Properties

We discuss modifications of hadron properties in the heat bath extracted from Euclidian correlation functions and spectral functions r econstructed with the Maximum Entropy Method. To investigate the cut-off dependencies we perform simulation on various lattice sizes and present the result of an analytic calculation of the mesonic spectral functions in the infinite temperature limit.Comment: Contribution to the Conference on Strong and Electroweak Matter (SEWM2002),Heidelberg, October 2-5 2002, 5 pages, 8 figure

Common features of deconfining and chiral critical points in QCD and the three state Potts model in an external field

In the presented study we investigated the second order endpoints of the lines of first order phase transitions which emerge for the QCD in the heavy and light quark mass regime and for the three-dimensional three state Potts model with an external field. We located the endpoints with Binder cumulants and constructed the energy-like and ordering field like observables. The joint probability distributions of these scaling fields and the values of the Binder cumulant confirm that all three endpoints belong to the universality class of the 3-dimensional Ising model.Comment: Based on a poster presented by S.Stickan at the CCP2001 Aachen,4 pages,6 figures, to be published in computer physics communicatio

A Lattice Calculation of Thermal Dilepton Rates

Using clover improved Wilson fermions we calculate thermal vector meson correlation functions above the deconfinement phase transition of quenched QCD. At temperatures 1.5 Tc and 3Tc they are found to differ by less than 15% from that of a freely propagating quark anti-quark pair. This puts severe constraints on the dilepton production rate and in particular rules out a strong divergence of the dilepton rate at low energies. The vector spectral function, which has been reconstructed using the Maximum Entropy Method, yields an enhancement of the dilepton rate over the Born rate of at most a factor two in the energy interval 4 < E/T < 8 and suggests that the spectrum is cut-off at low energies by a thermal mass threshold of about (2-3)T.Comment: 9 pages, LaTeX2e File, 5 EPS files; minor corrections, modified error bins in Fig.2

QCD Thermodynamics with 2 and 3 Quark Flavors

We discuss the flavor dependence of the pressure and critical temperature calculated in QCD with 2, 2+1 and 3 flavors using improved gauge and staggered fermion actions on lattices with temporal extent Nt=4. For T > 2 Tc we find that bulk thermodynamics of QCD with 2 light and a heavier strange quark is well described by 3-flavor QCD while the transition temperature is closer to that of 2-flavor QCD. Furthermore, we present evidence that the chiral critical point of 3-flavor QCD, 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: 6 pages, LaTeX2e File, 7 EPS-figures, presented at SEWM 2000, Marseille, June 13-17th, 200

Hadron correlators, spectral functions and thermal dilepton rates from lattice QCD

We discuss information on thermal modifications of hadron properties which can be extracted from the structure of Euclidean correlation functions of hadronic currents as well as more direct information obtained through the reconstruction of the spectral functions based on the Maximum Entropy Method.Comment: 4 pages, latex2e, 5 EPS-files, invited contribution to the 16th Int. Conf. on Ultra-Relativistic Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions, Nantes, France, 18 - 24 July, 200

Lattice calculation of medium effects at short and long distances

We investigate medium effects in QCD like chromoelectric screening and quasi-particle mass generation by calculating the heavy quark potential as well as the temporal quark and gluon Coulomb gauge propagators in quenched approximation.Comment: To appear in proceedings of Quark Matter 2001, 4 pages LaTeX, uses espcrc1.st

Free Meson Spectral Functions on the Lattice

We present results from an analytic calculation of thermal meson spectral functions in the infinite temperature (free field) limit. We compare spectral functions for various lattice fermion formulations used at present in studies of in-medium properties of hadrons based on the maximum entropy method (MEM). In particular, we will present a new calculation of spectral functions performed with extended quark sources.Comment: 3 pages, Lattice2003(nonzero

Meson Spectral Functions at finite Temperature

The Maximum Entropy Method provides a Bayesian approach to reconstruct the spectral functions from discrete points in Euclidean time. The applicability of the approach at finite temperature is probed with the thermal meson correlation function. Furthermore the influence of fuzzing/smearing techniques on the spectral shape is investigated. We present first results for meson spectral functions at several temperatures below and above $T_c$. The correlation functions were obtained from quenched calculations with Clover fermions on large isotropic lattices of the size $(24-64)^3 \times 16$. We compare the resulting pole masses with the ones obtained from standard 2-exponential fits of spatial and temporal correlation functions at finite temperature and in the vacuum. The deviation of the meson spectral functions from free spectral functions is examined above the critical temperature.Comment: Lattice2001(hightemp), 3 pages, 6 figure

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