We determine the curvature of the phase transition line in the mu-T plane through an analysis of various observables, including the Polyakov loop, the quark number susceptibilities and the susceptibility of the chiral condensate. The second derivative of these quantities with respect to mu was calculated. The measurements were carried out on N_T = 4,6,8 and 10 lattices generated with a Symanzik improved gauge and stout-link improved 2+1 flavour staggered fermion action using physical quark masses.
We study QCD with (2+1)-HISQ fermions at nonzero temperature and nonzero imaginary baryon chemical potential. Monte Carlo simulations are performed using the MILC code along the line of constant physics with a light to strange mass ratio of $m_l/m_s=1/20$ on lattices up to $48^3 \times 12$ to check for finite cutoff effects. We determine the curvature of the pseudocritical line extrapolated to the continuum limit.
We present results on the curvature of the critical line of QCD with 2+1 HISQ fermions at nonzero temperature and quark density obtained by analytic continuation from imaginary chemical potentials. Monte Carlo simulations are performed by means of the MILC code, suitably modified to include a nonzero imaginary baryon chemical potential. We set the chemical potential at the same value for the three quark species and work on the line of constant physics with a light to strange mass ratio of 1/20 as determined in Ref.~\cite{Bazavov:2011nk}.
We studied the Berry curvature of the massive Dirac fermion in 3+1 dimensions. For the non-interacting Dirac fermion, the Berry curvature is non-Abelian because of the degeneracy of positive and negative helicity modes. We calculated the non-Abelian Berry curvature analytically and numerically. For the interacting Dirac fermion in QCD, the degeneracy is lost because gluons carry helicity and color charge. We calculated the Abelian Berry curvature in lattice QCD.
The Berry curvature is a fundamental concept describing topological order of quantum systems. While it can be analytically tractable in non-interacting systems, numerical simulations are necessary in interacting systems. We present a formulation to calculate the Berry curvature in lattice QCD.
We compute the slope and curvature, at vanishing four-momentum transfer squared, of the leading order hadron vacuum polarization function, using lattice QCD. Calculations are performed with 2+1+1 flavors of staggered fermions directly at the physical values of the quark masses and in volumes of linear extent larger than 6fm. The continuum limit is carried out using six different lattice spacings. All connected and disconnected contributions are calculated, up to and including those of the charm.
We study the curvature of the chiral transition/crossover line between the low-temperature hadronic phase and the high-temperature quark-gluon-plasma phase at low densities, performing simulations of two-flavor QCD with improved Wilson quarks. After confirming that the chiral order parameter defined by a Ward-Takahashi identity is consistent with the scaling of the O(4) universality class at zero chemical potential, we extend the scaling analysis to finite chemical potential to determine the curvature of the chiral transition/crossover line at low densities assuming the O(4) universality. To c…
We investigate the phase structure of three-flavor QCD in the presence of finite quark chemical potential $μ/T\lesssim1.2$ by using the non-perturbatively $O(a)$ improved Wilson fermion action on lattices with a fixed temporal extent $N_{\rm t}=6$ and varied spatial linear extents $N_{\rm s}=8,10,12$. Especially, we focus on locating the critical end point that characterizes the phase structure, and extracting the curvature of the critical line on the $μ$-$m_π$ plane. For Wilson-type fermions, the correspondence between bare parameters and physical parameters is indirect. Hence we present a st…
We determine the curvature of the pseudo-critical line of $N_f = 2 + 1$ QCD with physical quark masses via Taylor expansion in the quark chemical potentials. We adopt a discretization based on stout improved staggered fermions and the tree level Symanzik gauge action; the location of the pseudocritical temperature is based on chiral symmetry restoration. Simulations are performed on lattices with different temporal extent ($N_t = 6, 8, 10$), leading to a continuum extrapolated curvature $κ= 0.0145(25)$, which is in very good agreement with the continuum extrapolation obtained via analytic cont…
We calculate the mean and variance of net-baryon number and net-electric charge distributions from Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) using a next-to-leading order Taylor expansion in terms of temperature and chemical potentials. We compare these expansions with experimental data from STAR and PHENIX, determine the freeze-out temperature in the limit of vanishing baryon chemical potential, and, for the first time, constrain the curvature of the freeze-out line through a direct comparison between experimental data on net-charge fluctuations and a QCD calculation. We obtain a bound on the curvature co…
We determine the curvature of the pseudo-critical line of strong interactions by means of numerical simulations at imaginary chemical potentials. We consider $N_f=2+1$ stout improved staggered fermions with physical quark masses and the tree level Symanzik gauge action, and explore four different sets of lattice spacings, corresponding to $N_t = 6,8,10,12$, in order to extrapolate results to the continuum limit. Our final estimate is $κ= 0.0135(20)$.
We determine the curvature of the pseudo-critical line of strong interactions by means of numerical simulations at imaginary chemical potentials. We consider $N_f=2+1$ stout improved staggered fermions with physical quark masses and the tree level Symanzik gauge action, and explore two different sets of lattice spacings, corresponding to temporal extensions $N_t = 6$ and $N_t = 8$. Both the renormalized chiral condensate and the renormalized chiral susceptibility are used to locate the transition. The determinations obtained from the two quantities are in good agreement, a preliminary continuu…
Using numerical simulations of lattice QCD with physical quark masses, we reveal the influence of magnetic-field background on chiral and deconfinement crossovers in finite-temperature QCD at low baryonic density. In the absence of thermodynamic singularity, we identify these transitions with inflection points of the approximate order parameters: normalized light-quark condensate and renormalized Polyakov loop, respectively. We show that the quadratic curvature of the chiral transition temperature in the ``temperature--chemical potential'' plane depends rather weakly on the strength of the bac…
We present a determination of the curvature $κ$ of the chiral pseudocritical line from $N_f=2+1$ lattice QCD at the physical point obtained by adopting the Taylor expansion approach. Numerical simulations performed at three lattice spacings lead to a continuum extrapolated curvature $κ= 0.0145(25)$, a value that is in excellent agreement with continuum limit estimates obtained via analytic continuation within the same discretization scheme, $κ= 0.0135(20)$. The agreement between the two calculations is a solid consistency check for both methods.
We present the crossover line between the quark gluon plasma and the hadron gas phases for small real chemical potentials. First we determine the effect of imaginary values of the chemical potential on the transition temperature using lattice QCD simulations. Then we use various formulas to perform an analytic continuation to real values of the baryo-chemical potential. Our data set maintains strangeness neutrality to match the conditions of heavy ion physics. The systematic errors are under control up to $μ_B\approx 300$ MeV. For the curvature of the transition line we find that there is an a…
We present an effective field theory model for QCD at finite temperature with quarks. We discuss the mean field theory, the fixing of parameters, and a prediction for the curvature of the critical line. We proceed to write down a pionic theory of fluctuations around the mean field, and discuss how the parameters of this pionic effective theory descend from the model with quarks.
We employ the Complex Langevin method for simulation of complex-valued actions. First, we show how to test for convergence of the method by explicitely computing boundary terms and demonstrate this in a model. Then we investigate the deconfinement phase transition of QCD with $N_f=2$ Wilson-fermions using the Complex Langevin Method and. We give preliminary results for the transition temperatures up to $μ/T_c(μ=0)\approx 5$ and compute the curvature coefficient $κ_2$.
We determine the continuum limit of the curvature of the pseudocritical line of QCD with $n_f$=2+1 staggered fermions at nonzero temperature and quark density. We perform Monte Carlo simulations at imaginary baryon chemical potentials, adopting the HISQ/tree action discretization, as implemented in the code by the MILC collaboration. Couplings are adjusted so as to move on a line of constant physics, as determined in Ref.~\cite{Bazavov:2011nk}, with the strange quark mass $m_s$ fixed at its physical value and a light-to-strange mass ratio $m_l/m_s=1/20$. The chemical potential is set at the sa…
Relatively low crossover temperature suggests that chiral symmetry restoration in QCD may well be described within the low-energy effective theory. The shape of the pseudocritical line in the T-mu plane is estimated within this assumption. No critical endpoint is found for physical values of quark masses.
Mean-field model quantum field theories of hadrons were traditionally developed to describe cold and dense nuclear matter and are by now very well constrained from the recent neutron star merger observations. We show that when augmented with additional known hadrons and resonances but not included earlier, these mean-field models can be extended beyond its regime of applicability. Calculating some specific ratios of baryon number susceptibilities for finite temperature and moderate values of baryon densities within mean-field approximation, we show that these match consistently with the lattic…
