Screening correlators and masses were studied at finite temperature in QCD with two flavours of dynamical staggered quarks on a lattice. The spectrum of screening masses show a hierarchical approach to chiral symmetry restoration. Control of explicit chiral symmetry breaking through the quark mass was shown to be an important step to understanding this phenomenon. No sign of decays was found in the finite temperature scalar meson-like correlators in the confined phase.
Thermal (Th-)QCD properties appear to disagree with lattice (L-)QCD results, which suggests that Th-QCD does not have a valid perturbative expansion. However, we reproduce L-QCD using the first order $α_s$ corrections in Th-QCD.
The electrical conductivity in the hot phase of the QCD plasma is extracted from a quenched lattice measurement of the Euclidean time vector correlator for 1.5 < T/T_c < 3. The spectral density in the vicinity of the origin is examined using a method specially adapted to this region, and a peak at small energies is seen. The continuum limit of the electrical conductivity, and the closely related soft photon emissivity of the QCD plasma, are then extracted from a fit to the Fourier transform of the temporal vector correlator.
The static forces between electric charges and currents are modified at the loop level by the presence of a plasma. While electric charges are screened, currents are not. The effective coupling constant at long distances is enhanced in both cases as compared to the vacuum, and by different amounts, a clear sign that Lorentz symmetry is broken. We investigate these effects quantitatively, first in a QED plasma and secondly using non-perturbative simulations of QCD with two light degenerate flavors of quarks.
We present the first lattice QCD study of up to $3S$ and $2P$ bottomonia at non-zero temperatures. Correlation functions of bottomonia were computed using novel bottomonium operators and a variational technique, within the lattice non-relativistic QCD framework. We analyzed the bottomonium correlation functions based on simple physically-motivated spectral functions. We found evidence of sequential in-medium modifications, in accordance with the sizes of the bottomonium states.
Comparison of two appropriately chosen screening masses of colour singlet operators in the pure glue QCD plasma indicates that at sufficiently high temperature it contains a weakly-interacting massive quasi-particle with the quantum numbers of the electric gluon. Still in the deconfined phase, but closer to T_c, the same mass ratio is similar to that at zero temperature, indicating that the propagating modes are more glueball-like, albeit with a lower scale for the masses. We observe a continuity between these two regimes.
The FASTSUM collaboration has been carrying out simulations of N_f=2+1 QCD at nonzero temperature in the fixed-scale approach using anisotropic lattices. Here we present the status of these studies, including recent results for electrical conductivity and charge diffusion, and heavy quarkonium (charm and beauty) physics.
We perform real-time lattice simulations of nonequilibrium quark production in the longitudinally expanding QCD plasma. Starting from a highly occupied gluonic state with vacuum quark sector, we extract the time evolution of quark and gluon number densities per unit transverse area and rapidity. The total quark number shows after an initial rapid increase an almost linear growth with time. Remarkably, this growth rate appears to be consistent with a simple kinetic theory estimate involving only two-to-two scattering processes in small-angle approximation. This extends previous findings about t…
Self-consistent approximations in terms of fully dressed propagators provide a simple expression for the entropy of an ultrarelativistic plasma, which isolates the contribution of the elementary excitations as a leading contribution. Further approximations, whose validity is checked on a soluble model involving a scalar field, allow us to calculate the entropy of the QCD plasma. We obtain an accurate description of lattice data for purely gluonic QCD, down to temperatures of about twice the transition temperature.
We study bottomonium spectral functions in the quark-gluon plasma in the Upsilon and eta_b channels, using lattice QCD simulations with two flavours of light quark on highly anisotropic lattices. The bottom quark is treated with nonrelativistic QCD (NRQCD). In the temperature range we consider, 0.42 < T/T_c < 2.09, we find that the ground states survive, whereas the excited states are suppressed as the temperature is increased. The position and width of the ground states are compared to analytical effective field theory (EFT) predictions. Systematic uncertainties of the maximum entropy method …
We study correlation functions of various static meson operators of size r at non-zero temperature in 2+1 flavor QCD, including Coulomb gauge fixed operators and Wilson loops with smeared spatial parts. The numerical calculations are performed on 24^3x6 lattices using highly improved staggered quark action. We discuss possible implications of our findings on the temperature dependence of the static energy of QQbar pair.
We study the temperature dependence of bottomonium for temperatures in the range 0.4 Tc < T < 2.1 Tc, using non-relativistic dynamics for the bottom quark and full relativistic lattice QCD simulations for Nf=2 light flavors. We consider the behaviour of the correlators in Euclidean space, we analyze the associated spectral functions and we study the dependence on the momentum. Our results are amenable to a successful comparison with effective field theories. They help build a coherent picture of the behaviour of bottomonium in the plasma, consistent which the current LHC results.
We supply recently obtained results from lattice EQCD with the correct UV limit to construct the collisional broadening kernel $C(b_\perp)$ in a QCD plasma. We discuss the limiting behavior of $C(b_\perp)$ at small and large impact parameters $b_\perp$, and illustrate how the results can be used to compute medium-induced radiation rates.
We calculate the thermal rate of real-photon production in the quark-gluon plasma at a temperature of $T=254$ MeV using lattice QCD. The calculation is based on the difference between the spatially transverse and longitudinal parts of the polarization tensor, which has the advantage of falling off rapidly at large frequencies. We obtain this linear combination in the time-momentum representation from lattice QCD with two flavors of quarks in the continuum limit with a precision of about two parts per mille. Applying a theoretically motivated fit ansatz for the associated spectral function, we …
We present a state-of-the-art determination of the complex valued static quark-antiquark potential at phenomenologically relevant temperatures around the deconfinement phase transition. Its values are obtained from non-perturbative lattice QCD simulations using spectral functions extracted via a novel Bayesian inference prescription. We find that the real part, both in a gluonic medium as well as in realistic QCD with light $u$, $d$ and $s$ quarks, lies close to the color singlet free energies in Coulomb gauge and shows Debye screening above the (pseudo) critical temperature $T_c$. The imagina…
We review the determination of the strong coupling alpha_s from the comparison of the perturbative expression for the Quantum Chromodynamics static energy with lattice data. We collect here all the perturbative expressions needed to evaluate the static energy at the currently known accuracy.
We compute the purely gluonic contribution to the static QCD potential at three--loop order. This completes the computation of the static potential at this order.
Lattice QCD simulations offer the possibility of determining the potential between three static quarks from first principles. We review the status of such simulations, and the relative standing of the two theoretical proposals for the baryonic potential: the Delta law (sum of two-body terms) and the Y law (length of three flux strings joined together at a junction). We also present new results on the leading Luscher-like corrections to the asymptotic linear potential.
We discuss the spectrum of open string and point particle excitations in QCD with various source representations. Some general relations are introduced and lattice results presented. In particular we discuss the short-distance behaviour, relate this to perturbation theory expectations and comment on the matching between low energy matrix elements and high energy Wilson coefficients, within the framework of effective field theories.
The equilibrium thermodynamic properties of the SU(N) plasma at finite temperature are studied non-perturbatively in the large-N limit, via lattice simulations. We present high-precision numerical results for the pressure, trace of the energy-momentum tensor, energy density and entropy density of SU(N) Yang-Mills theories with N=3, 4, 5, 6 and 8 colors, in a temperature range from 0.8T_c to 3.4T_c (where T_c denotes the critical deconfinement temperature). The results, normalized according to the number of gluons, show a very mild dependence on N, supporting the idea that the dynamics of the s…
We report the continuum limits of the speed of sound, c_s, and the specific heat at constant volume, c_v, in quenched QCD at temperatures of 2Tc and 3Tc. At these temperatures, c_s is within 2-sigma of the ideal gas value, whereas c_v differs significantly from the ideal gas. However, both are compatible with results expected in a theory with conformal symmetry. We investigate effective measures of conformal symmetry in the high temperature phase of QCD.
We compute the QCD static force and potential using gradient flow at next-to-leading order in the strong coupling. The static force is the spatial derivative of the static potential: it encodes the QCD interaction at both short and long distances. While on the one side the static force has the advantage of being free of the $O(Λ_{\rm QCD})$ renormalon affecting the static potential when computed in perturbation theory, on the other side its direct lattice QCD computation suffers from poor convergence. The convergence can be improved by using gradient flow, where the gauge fields in the operato…
We resum the leading ultrasoft logs of the singlet and octet static QCD potentials within potential NRQCD. We then obtain the complete three-loop renormalization group improvement of the singlet QCD static potential. The discrepancies between the perturbative evaluation and the lattice results at short distances are slightly reduced.
Analyzing correlation functions of charmonia at finite temperature ($T$) on $32^3\times(32-96)$ anisotropic lattices by the maximum entropy method (MEM), we find that $J/ψ$ and $η_c$ survive as distinct resonances in the plasma even up to $T \simeq 1.6 T_c$ and that they eventually dissociate between $1.6 T_c$ and $1.9 T_c$ ($T_c$ is the critical temperature of deconfinement). This suggests that the deconfined plasma is non-perturbative enough to hold heavy-quark bound states. The importance of having sufficient number of temporal data points in MEM analyses is also emphasized.
Under suitable non-equilibrium conditions QCD plasma can develop plasma instabilities, where some modes of the plasma grow exponentially. It has been argued that these instabilities can play a significant role in the thermalisation of the plasma in heavy-ion collision experiments. We study the instability in SU(2) plasmas using the hard thermal loop effective lattice theory, which is suitable for studying real-time evolution of long wavelength modes in the plasma. We observe that under suitable conditions the plasma can indeed develop an instability which can grow to a very large magnitude, ne…
Using pNRQCD and known results for the field strength correlator, we calculate the ultrasoft contribution to the QCD static energy of a quark-antiquark pair at short distances at NNNNLO in alpha_s. At the same order, this provides the logarithmic terms of the singlet static potential in pNRQCD and the log alpha_s terms of the static energy.
A discussion on the electrical conductivity of the quark-gluon plasma as determined by lattice QCD is given. After a reminder of basic definitions and expectations, various methods for spectral reconstruction are reviewed, including the use of Ansätze and sum rules, the Maximum Entropy and Backus-Gilbert methods, and Tikhonov regularisation. A comprehensive overview of lattice QCD results obtained so far is given, including a comparison of the different lattice formulations. A noticeable consistency for the conductivities obtained is seen, in spite of the differences in the lattice setups and …
We analyze the static QCD potential V_QCD(r) in the distance region 0.1 fm < r < 1 fm using perturbative QCD and OPE as basic theoretical tools. We assemble theoretical developments up to date and perform a solid and accurate analysis. The analysis consists of 3 major steps: (I) We study large-order behavior of the perturbative series of V_QCD(r) analytically. (II) In the frame of OPE, we define two types of renormalization schemes for the leading Wilson coefficient. (III) We compare numerically perturbative predictions of the Wilson coefficient and lattice computations of V_QCD(r). We perform…
We discuss the imaginary chemical potential approach to the study of QCD at nonzero temperature and density, present results for the four flavor model in the different phases and show that this method is ideally suited for a comparison between lattice data and phenomenological models.
We revisit the static potential for the $Q Q \bar Q \bar Q$ system using SU(3) lattice simulations, studying both the colour singlets groundstate and first excited state. We consider geometries where the two static quarks and the two anti-quarks are at the corners of rectangles of different sizes. We analyse the transition between a tetraquark system and a two meson system with a two by two correlator matrix. We compare the potentials computed with quenched QCD and with dynamical quarks. We also compare our simulations with the results of previous studies and analyze quantitatively fits of our…
We compute the static energy of QCD at short distances at next-to-next-to-next-to leading-logarithmic accuracy in terms of the three-loop singlet potential. By comparing our results with lattice data we extract the value of the unknown piece of the three-loop singlet potential.
The static QCD potential is analyzed in operator-product-expansion within potential-NRQCD framework when r << 1/Lambda_{QCD}. We show that the leading short-distance contribution to the potential, defined as a perturbatively computable Wilson coefficient, can be expressed, up to O(r^2), as a ``Coulomb+linear'' potential. It coincides with the ``Coulomb+linear'' potential obtained previously from the renormalon-dominance hypothesis. Non-perturbative contributions are of order r^2 and subleading.
Chiral symmetry restoration high in the hadron spectra is expected but it remains to be confirmed both in lattice QCD computations and in experiments. Recently, a theorem was derived, relating chiral symmetry restoration high in the hadron spectra to the spontaneous generation of the dynamical quark mass in QCD. We refine the theorem in the case of static-light mesons. Utilizing chiral quark model computations and lattice QCD results for the spectrum of mesons composed by a static antiquark and a light quark, we explore chiral symmetry restoration in the spectrum and the quark running mass m(k…
We investigate the eigenvalue spectrum of the staggered Dirac matrix in SU(3) gauge theory and in full QCD on a $6^3\times 4$ lattice. As a measure of the fluctuation properties of the eigenvalues, we study the nearest-neighbor spacing distribution $P(s)$ for various values of $β$ both in the confinement and in the deconfinement phase. In both phases except far into the deconfinement region, the lattice data agree with the Wigner surmise of random-matrix theory which is indicative of quantum chaos. We do not find signs of a transition to Poisson regularity at the deconfinement phase transition…
We study the free energy of a static quark anti-quark pair at finite temperature in three flavor QCD with degenerate quark masses using N_tau=4 and 6 lattices with Asqtad staggered fermion action. The static free energy was calculated for different values of the quark mass and the entropy contribution at large distances has been extracted. We also calculate the renormalized Polyakov loop following the approach by Kaczmarek et al.
We study $I=0$ quarkonium resonances decaying into pairs of heavy-light mesons using static-static-light-light potentials from lattice QCD. To this end, we solve a coupled channel Schrödinger equation with a confined quarkonium channel and channels with a heavy-light meson pair to compute phase shifts and $\mbox{T}$ matrix poles for the lightest decay channel. We discuss our results for $S$, $P$, $D$ and $F$ wave states in the context of corresponding experimental results, in particular for $Υ(10753)$ and $Υ(10860)$.
I report on a lattice computation of the energy of a system of two light quarks and two static antiquarks as a function of the separation of the static antiquarks. In terms of hadrons such a system corresponds to a pair of B mesons and its energy to the hadronic potential. I present selected results for different isospin, spin and parity combinations of the individual B mesons mainly focusing on those channels relevant to determine, whether two B mesons may form a bound tetraquark state.
We discuss, how to study $I = 0$ quarkonium resonances decaying into pairs of heavy-light mesons using static potentials from lattice QCD. These static potentials can be obtained from a set of correlation functions containing both static and light quarks. As a proof of concept we focus on bottomonium with relative orbital angular momentum $L = 0$ of the $\bar{b} b$ pair corresponding to $J^{P C} = 0^{- +}$ and $J^{P C} = 1^{- -}$. We use static potentials from an existing lattice QCD string breaking study and compute phase shifts and $\mbox{T}$ matrix poles for the lightest heavy-light meson-m…
The definition of the quark-antiquark static potential is given within an effective field theory framework. The leading infrared divergences of the static singlet potential in perturbation theory are explicitly calculated.
This comment-style letter represents a part of my talks on new developments in lattice QCD. While it does not contain any new results, it containes some theoretical ideas and comparisons which, I think, are not yet widely discussed in the lattice community. We point out that for $N_f\sim 10$ one can study a plasma phase which is much more "magnetic dominated" than for small $N_f$. We also suggest certain tests/measurements to check if "unusual confinement" phases are or are not realized in this region.
We use a transport-theory approach to construct the static propagator of a gauge boson in a plasma with a general axially- and reflection-symmetric momentum distribution. Non-zero magnetic screening is found if the distribution is anisotropic, confirming the results of a closed-time-path-integral approach. We find that the electric and magnetic screening effects depend on both the orientation of the momentum carried by the boson and the orientation of its polarization. In some orientations there can be antiscreening, reflecting the instabilities of such a medium. We present some fairly general…
I consider two cases where QCD string is described by an effective theory of long strings: the static potential and meson scattering amplitudes in the Regge regime. I show how they can be solved in the mean-field approximation, justified by the large number of space-time dimensions, and argue that it turns out to be exact. I compare contributions from QCD string and perturbative QCD and discuss experimental consequences for the scattering amplitudes.
We estimate the potential energy for a system of three static gluons in Lattice QCD. This is relevant for the different models of three-body glueballs have been proposed in the literature, either for gluons with a constituent mass, or for massless ones. A Wilson loop adequate to the static hybrid three-body system is developed. We study different spacial geometries, to compare the starfish model with the triangle model, for the three-gluon potential. We also study two different colour structures, symmetric and antisymmetric, and compare the respective static potentials. A first simulation is p…
In previous works we predicted the existence of a $\bar b \bar b u d$ tetraquark with quantum numbers $I(J^P) = 0(1^+)$ using the static approximation for the $\bar b$ quarks and neglecting heavy spin effects. Since the binding energy is of the same order as expected for these heavy spin effects, it is essential to include them in the computation. Here we present a corresponding method and show evidence that binding is only slightly weakened and that the $\bar b \bar b u d$ tetraquark persists.
Comparing perturbative calculations with a lattice computation of the static energy in quantum chromodynamics at short distances, we obtain a determination of the strong coupling alpha_s. Our determination is performed at a scale of around 1.5 GeV (the typical distance scale of the lattice data) and, when evolved to the Z-boson mass scale M_Z, it corresponds to alpha_s(M_Z)=0.1156^{+0.0021}_{-0.0022}.
We determine the strong coupling constant $α_s(M_Z)$ from the static QCD potential by matching a lattice result and a theoretical calculation. We use a new theoretical framework based on operator product expansion (OPE), where renormalons are subtracted from the leading Wilson coefficient. We find that our OPE prediction can explain the lattice data at $Λ_{\rm QCD} r \lesssim 0.8$. This allows us to use a larger window in matching, which leads to a more reliable determination. We obtain $α_s(M_Z)=0.1179^{+0.0015}_{-0.0014}$.
We determine the strong coupling constant $α_s$ from the static QCD potential by matching a theoretical calculation with a lattice QCD computation. We employ a new theoretical formulation based on the operator product expansion, in which renormalons are subtracted from the leading Wilson coefficient. We remove not only the leading renormalon uncertainty of $\mathcal{O}(Λ_{\rm QCD})$ but also the first $r$-dependent uncertainty of $\mathcal{O}(Λ_{\rm QCD}^3 r^2)$. The theoretical prediction for the potential turns out to be valid at the static color charge distance $Λ_{\rm \overline{MS}} r \les…
I review the progress made in extracting transport properties of the quark-gluon plasma from lattice QCD simulations. The information on shear and bulk viscosity, the "low-energy constants" of hydrodynamics, is encoded in the retarded correlators of Tmunu, the energy-momentum tensor. Euclidean correlators, computable on the lattice, are related to the retarded correlators by an integral transform. The most promising strategy to extract shear and bulk viscosity is to study the shear and sound channel correlators where the hydrodynamic modes dominate. I present preliminary results from a compreh…
We obtain a determination of the strong coupling alpha_s in quantum chromodynamics, by comparing perturbative calculations for the short-distance part of the static energy with lattice computations. Our result reads alpha_s(1.5GeV)=0.326\pm0.019, and when evolved to the scale M_Z (the Z-boson mass) it corresponds to alpha_s(M_Z)=0.1156^{+0.0021}_{-0.0022}.
The crossing from a static quark-antiquark system to a system of two static-light mesons when the separation of the static quarks is increased is calculated in zero-temperature lattice QCD. The mixing of these two states is extracted from the lattice operators. We also discuss the breaking of an excited string of a hybrid meson.
We report our present status of on-going project on the measurement of the static quark potential in 2+1 flavour domain wall QCD with various improved gauge actions and couplings. Lattice spacing determined from Sommer scale on these ensembles are from 1.6 GeV to 2.0 GeV for $16^3 \times 32$ lattice with fifth dimension size 8. We also examine size of discretization error from scaling of a pair of dimensionless quantities, $(r_0 m_π)^2$ and $r_0 m_ρ$, and found small scaling violation.
Baryonic correlation functions provide an ideal tool to study parity doubling and chiral symmetry using lattice simulations. We present a study using $2+1$ flavors of anisotropic Wilson clover fermions on the FASTSUM ensembles and find clear evidence that parity doubling emerges in the quark-gluon plasma. This result is confirmed on the level of spectral functions, which are obtained using a MEM reconstruction. We further highlight the importance of Gaussian smearing in this study.
We compute the static-light meson spectrum with N_f = 2 flavours of sea quarks using Wilson twisted mass lattice QCD. We consider five different values for the light quark mass corresponding to 300 MeV < m_PS < 600 MeV and we present results for angular momentum j = 1/2, j = 3/2 and j = 5/2 and for parity P = + and P = -. We extrapolate our results to physical quark masses and make predictions regarding the spectrum of B and B_s mesons.
We present a computation of the photon emission rate of the quark-gluon plasma from two-flavor lattice QCD at a temperature of 254 MeV, which follows up on the work presented in [1]. We perform a continuum extrapolation of the vector-current correlator, and consider a linear combination of the Lorentz indices corresponding to a UV-finite spectral function. To extract the spectral function from the lattice correlators, an ill-posed inverse problem, we model the spectral function with a Padé ansatz. We further constrain our analysis by simultaneously fitting data with different momenta. We prese…
We compute the static-light meson spectrum using two-flavor Wilson twisted mass lattice QCD. We have considered five different values for the light quark mass corresponding to 300 MeV < m_PS < 600 MeV. We have extrapolated our results, to make predictions regarding the spectrum of B and B_s mesons.
