On the magnetic equation of state in (2+1)-flavor QCD

A first study of critical behavior in the vicinity of the chiral phase transition of (2+1)-flavor QCD is presented. We analyze the quark mass and volume dependence of the chiral condensate and chiral susceptibilities in QCD with two degenerate light quark masses and a strange quark. The strange quark mass (m_s) is chosen close to its physical value; the two degenerate light quark masses (m_l) are varied in a wide range 1/80 \le m_l/m_s \le 2/5, where the smallest light quark mass value corresponds to a pseudo-scalar Goldstone mass of about 75 MeV. All calculations are performed with staggered fermions on lattices with temporal extent Nt=4. We show that numerical results are consistent with O(N) scaling in the chiral limit. We find that in the region of physical light quark mass values, m_l/m_s \simeq 1/20, the temperature and quark mass dependence of the chiral condensate is already dominated by universal properties of QCD that are encoded in the scaling function for the chiral order parameter, the magnetic equation of state. We also provide evidence for the influence of thermal fluctuations of Goldstone modes on the chiral condensate at finite temperature. At temperatures below, but close to the chiral phase transition at vanishing quark mass, this leads to a characteristic dependence of the light quark chiral condensate on the square root of the light quark mass.Comment: 18 pages, 18 EPS-file

Conserved Charge Fluctuations from Lattice QCD and the Beam Energy Scan

We discuss the next-to-leading order Taylor expansion of ratios of cumulants of net-baryon number fluctuations. We focus on the relation between the skewness ratio, $S_B\sigma_B = \chi_3^B/\chi_1^B$, and the kurtosis ratio, $\kappa_B\sigma_B^2 =\chi_4^B/\chi_2^B$. We show that differences in these two cumulant ratios are small for small values of the baryon chemical potential. The next-to-leading order correction to $\kappa_B\sigma_B^2$ however is approximately three times larger than that for $S_B\sigma_B$. The former thus drops much more rapidly with increasing beam energy, $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$. We argue that these generic patterns are consistent with current data on cumulants of net-proton number fluctuations measured by the STAR Collaboration at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}\ge 19.6$~GeV.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, contribution to the Quark Matter 2015 proceeding

Charmonium properties in hot quenched lattice QCD

We study the properties of charmonium states at finite temperature in quenched QCD on large and fine isotropic lattices. We perform a detailed analysis of charmonium correlation and spectral functions both below and above $T_c$. Our analysis suggests that both S wave states ($J/\psi$ and $\eta_c$) and P wave states ($\chi_{c0}$ and $\chi_{c1}$) disappear already at about $1.5 T_c$. The charm diffusion coefficient is estimated through the Kubo formula and found to be compatible with zero below $T_c$ and approximately $1/\pi T$ at $1.5 T_c\lesssim T\lesssim 3 T_c$.Comment: 32 pages, 19 figures, typo corrected, discussions on isotropic vs anisotropic lattices expanded, published versio

Study of the finite temperature transition in 3-flavor QCD using the R and RHMC algorithms

We study the finite temperature transition in QCD with three flavors of equal masses using the R and RHMC algorithm on lattices with temporal extent N_{\tau}=4 and 6. For the transition temperature in the continuum limit we find r_0 T_c=0.429(8) for the light pseudo-scalar mass corresponding to the end point of the 1st order transition region. When comparing the results obtained with the R and RHMC algorithms for p4fat3 action we see no significant step-size errors down to a lightest pseudo-scalar mass of m_{ps} r_0=0.4.Comment: 13 pages, RevTeX, 10 figure

Equation of State for physical quark masses

We calculate the QCD equation of state for temperatures corresponding to the transition region with physical mass values for two degenerate light quark flavors and a strange quark using an improved staggered fermion action (p4-action) on lattices with temporal extent N_tau=8. We compare our results with previous calculations performed at twice larger values of the light quark masses as well as with results obtained from a resonance gas model calculation. We also discuss the deconfining and chiral aspects of the QCD transition in terms of renormalized Polyakov loop, strangeness fluctuations and subtracted chiral condensate. We show that compared to the calculations performed at twice larger value of the light quark mass the transition region shifts by about 5 MeV toward smaller temperaturesComment: 7 pages, LaTeX, 6 figures; minor corrections, typos corrected, references adde

The Spatial String Tension and Dimensional Reduction in QCD

We calculate the spatial string tension in (2+1) flavor QCD with physical strange quark mass and almost physical light quark masses using lattices with temporal extent N_tau=4,6 and 8. We compare our results on the spatial string tension with predictions of dimensionally reduced QCD. This suggests that also in the presence of light dynamical quarks dimensional reduction works well down to temperatures 1.5T_c.Comment: 8 pages ReVTeX, 4 figure