Transition temperature in QCD with physical light and strange quark masses

We present results from a calculation of the transition temperature in QCD with two light and one heavier (strange) quark mass on lattices with temporal extent N_t =4 and 6. Calculations with improved staggered fermions have been performed with a strange quark mass fixed close to its physical value and for various light to strange quark mass ratios that correspond to light pseudo-scalar masses in the range (150-500) MeV. From a combined extrapolation to the chiral (m_l -> 0) and continuum (aT -> 0) limits we obtain for the transition temperature at the physical point T_c = 192(7)(4) MeV. We also present first results from an ongoing calculation of the QCD equation of state with almost realistic light and strange quark masses.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, to appear in the proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Ultra-Relativistic Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions, Shanghai, Nov. 200

Heavy quark thermodynamics in full QCD

We analyze the large-distance behaviour of static quark-anti-quark pair correlations in QCD. The singlet free energy is calculated and the entropy contribution to it is identified allowing us to calculate the excess internal energy. The free energy has a sharp drop in the critical region, leading to sharp peaks in both excess entropy and internal energy.Comment: talk given at Quark Matter 200