Thermodynamics and in-medium hadron properties from lattice QCD

Non-perturbative studies of the thermodynamics of strongly interacting elementary particles within the context of lattice regularized QCD are being reviewed. After a short introduction into thermal QCD on the lattice we report on the present status of investigations of bulk properties. In particular, we discuss the present knowledge of the phase diagram including recent developments of QCD at non-zero baryon number density. We continue with the results obtained so far for the transition temperature as well as the temperature dependence of energy and pressure and comment on screening and the heavy quark free energies. A major section is devoted to the discussion of thermal modifications of hadron properties, taking special account of recent progress through the use of the maximum entropy method.Comment: prepared for "Quark-Gluon Plasma III", R.Hwa (ed.

Further Evidence for an unstable H-Dibaryon?

We present preliminary results for the mass of the 6q flavor-singlet state ($J^P=0^+$, $S=-2$) called H-dibaryon, calculated in quenched QCD on $16^3$x30 and $24^3$x30 lattices with improved gauge and fermion actions (Symanzik improvement, Clover action). For both lattice sizes we applied the fuzzing technique to enhance the overlap with the ground state. We observe a H-mass above the $\Lambda\Lambda$ threshold for strong decay. The difference in mass, $m_H - 2m_\Lambda$, increases with increasing lattice size.Comment: Poster at LATTICE99 (QCD Spectrum and Quark Masses), 3 pages, 4 figures, LaTeX2e using espcrc2.st

Quark Mass and Flavour Dependence of the QCD Phase Transition

We analyze the quark mass and flavour dependence of the QCD phase transition temperature. When the lightest pseudo-scalar meson mass (m_PS) is larger than 2 GeV the critical temperature is controlled by the gluonic sector of QCD alone. For smaller values of the lightest meson mass the pseudo-critical temperature decreases slowly with m_PS. For a large regime of meson masses the pseudo-critical temperature of 2-flavour QCD is about 10% larger than in the 3-flavour case. On lattices with temporal extent N_t=4 an extrapolation to the chiral limit yields T_c = 173(8) MeV and 154(8) MeV for 2 and 3-flavour QCD, respectively. We also analyze dynamical quark mass effects on the screening of the heavy quark potential. A detailed analysis of the heavy quark free energy in 3-flavour QCD shows that close to T_c screening effects are approximately quark mass independent already for pseudo-scalar meson masses m_PS = 800 MeV and screening sets in at distances r = 0.3 fm.Comment: 25 pages, LaTeX2e File, 11 EPS-file

Deconfinement through Chiral Symmetry Restoration in Two-Flavour QCD

We propose that in QCD with dynamical quarks, colour deconfinement occurs when an external field induced by the chiral condensate strongly aligns the Polyakov loop. This effect sets in at the chiral symmetry restoration temperature T-chi and thus makes deconfinement and chiral symmetry restoration coincide. The predicted singular behaviour of Polyakov loop susceptibilities at T-chi is shown to be supported by finite temperature lattice calculations.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure

Deconfinement Through Chiral Transition In 2 Flavour QCD

We propose that in QCD with dynamical quarks, colour deconfinement occurs when an external field induced by the chiral condensate strongly aligns the Polyakov loop. This effect sets in at the chiral symmetry restoration temperature $T_{\chi}$ and thus makes deconfinement and chiral symmetry restoration coincide. The predicted singular behavior of Polyakov loop susceptibilities at $T_{\chi}$ is shown to be supported by finite temperature lattice calculations.Comment: Talk given at Lattice 2000 (Finite Temperature), 4 pages, 6 EPS-figure

The Phase Diagram of 2 flavour QCD with improved Actions

It has been proposed, that the chiral continuum limit of 2-flavour QCD with Wilson fermions is brought about by a phase in which flavour and parity symmetry are broken spontaneously at finite lattice spacing. At finite temperature this phase should retract from the weak coupling limit to form 5 cusps. This scenario is studied with tree level Symanzik improved actions for both gauge and fermion fields on lattices of size $8^3\times 4$ and $12^2\times 24\times 4$.Comment: Talk given at Conference on Strong and Electroweak Matter (SEWM 98), Copenhagen, Denmark, 2-5 Dec 199

Two Flavour QCD Phase Transition

Results on the phase transition in QCD with two flavours of light staggered fermions from an ongoing simulation are presented. We find the restoration of the chiral SU(2) x SU(2) symmetry, but not of the axial U_A(1) symmetry.Comment: LaTeX2e, amstex package. 4 pages, 2 figures. Talk presented at the 10th International Conference on Problems of Quantum Field Theory, Crime

The pion form factor on the lattice at zero and finite temperature

We calculate the electromagnetic form factor of the pion in quenched lattice QCD. The non-perturbatively improved Sheikoleslami-Wohlert lattice action is used together with the consistently O(a) improved current. We calculate the pion form factor for masses down to m_pi = 360 MeV, extract the charge radius, and extrapolate toward the physical pion mass. In the second part, we discuss results for the pion form factor and charge radius at 0.93 T_c and compare with zero temperature results.Comment: Invited talk at the Lightcone 2004 conference, Amsterdam, 16-20 August, 200