Considering the strong field approximation we compute the hard thermal loop pressure at finite temperature and chemical potential of hot and dense deconfined QCD matter in lowest Landau level in one-loop order. We consider the anisotropic pressure in the presence of the strong magnetic field i.e., longitudinal and transverse pressure along parallel and perpendicular to the magnetic field direction. As a first effort, we compute and discuss the anisotropic quark number susceptibility of deconfined QCD matter in lowest Landau level. The longitudinal quark number susceptibility is found to increase with the temperature whereas the transverse one decreases with the temperature. We also compute the quark number susceptibility in the weak field approximation. We find that the thermomagnetic correction to the quark number susceptibility is very marginal in the weak field approximation.
Considering the general structure of the two point functions of quarks and gluons, we compute the free energy and pressure of a strongly magnetized hot and dense QCD matter created in heavy-ion collisions. In presence of strong magnetic field we found that the deconfined QCD matter exhibits a paramagnetic nature. One gets different pressure in a direction parallel and perpendicular to magnetic field due to the magnetization acquired by the system. We obtain both longitudinal and transverse pressure, and magnetization of a hot deconfined QCD matter in presence of magnetic field. We have used ha…
Spin-dependent deconfined interaction in the Q\barQ system is derived from the field correlators known from lattice and analytic calculations. As a result hyperfine splitting is found numerically for charmonium, bottomonium and strangeonium in the range T_c<T<2T_c. Spin-orbit interaction due to magnetic correlators (the Thomas term) is able to produce numerous Q\barQ bound states with accumulation point at M=m_Q+m_\barQ. Possible influence of these effects on the thermodynamics of quark-gluon plasma is discussed.
We numerically compute the spatial string tension in the deconfined phase of three dimensional QCD in the large N limit. Our results clearly show that the string tension grows linearly with temperature.
Formalism for a unified description of distinct superfluid phases of a deconfined QCD matter at finite density together with the phase of spontaneously broken chiral symmetry is presented. Dispersion laws of the quasiquark excitations in both diamagnetic and ferromagnetic phases with spontaneously broken chiral symmetry are exhibited explicitly.
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.
A simple quasiparticle model, motivated by lowest-order perturbative QCD, is proposed. It is applied to interpret the lattice QCD equation of state. A reasonable reproduction of the lattice data is obtained. In contrast to existing quasiparticle models, the present model is formulated in dynamical rather than thermodynamical terms, and is easily applicable to a system with finite baryon density. In particular, the model simulates the confinement property.
We present large $N_f$ QCD/QED as a test bed for improved pressure calculations, show how to apply the hints obtained on optimized renormalization scales at large $N_f$ to finite $N_f=2$, and compare the results to recent lattice data.
We have systematically constructed the general structure of the gauge boson self-energy and the effective propagator in presence of a nontrivial background like hot magnetized material medium. Based on this as well as the general structure of fermion propagator in weakly magnetized medium we have calculated pressure of deconfined QCD matter within HTL approximation.
We present an overview of the arguments which lead to the picture that at low temperatures the QCD matter not far above a critical confinement-deconfinement density exists in one of several distinct superfluid phases exhibiting the quantum behavior on macroscopic scales.
We consider our recently obtained general structure of two point (self-energy and propagator) functions of quarks and gluons in a nontrivial background like a heat bath and an external magnetic field. Based on this, here we have computed free energy and pressure of quarks and gluons for a magnetized hot and dense deconfined QCD matter in weak field approximation. For heat bath we have used hard thermal loop perturbation theory (HTLpt) in presence of finite chemical potential. For weak field approximations we have obtained the pressure of QCD matter, both with and without the high temperature e…
A new method for the evaluation of the perturbative expansion of the QCD pressure is presented which is valid for all temperatures and quark chemical potentials in the deconfined phase, and worked out up to and including order g^4. This new approach unifies several distinct perturbative approaches to the equation of state, and agrees with dimensional reduction, HDL and HTL resummation schemes, and the zero-temperature result in their respective ranges of validity.
We present a new method for the evaluation of the perturbative expansion of the QCD pressure which is valid at all values of the temperature and quark chemical potentials in the deconfined phase and which we work out up to and including order g^4 accuracy. Our calculation is manifestly four-dimensional and purely diagrammatic -- and thus independent of any effective theory descriptions of high temperature or high density QCD. In various limits, we recover the known results of dimensional reduction and the HDL and HTL resummation schemes, as well as the equation of state of zero-temperature qua…
Using quasiparticle models and imposing thermodynamic consistency, lattice data for the equation of state of deconfined QCD can be mapped to finite chemical potential. We consider a refinement of existing simple massive quasiparticle models using the non-local hard-thermal-loop (HTL) propagators, and certain NLO corrections thereof, to obtain the thermodynamic potential as a function of temperature and chemical potential. At small chemical potential we find that the results for the slope of constant pressure from our main model for 2 massless quark flavors is in good agreement with recent latt…
In this work, we consider open-boundary conditions at high temperatures, as they can potentially be of help to measure the topological susceptibility. In particular, we measure the extent of the boundary effects at $T=1.5T_c$ and $T=2.7T_c$. In the first case, it is larger than at $T=0$ while we find it to be smaller in the second case. The length of this "boundary zone" is controlled by the screening masses. We use this fact to measure the scalar and pseudo-scalar screening masses at these two temperatures. We observe a mass gap at $T=1.5T_c$ but not at $T=2.7T_c$. Finally, we use our pseudo-…
Temporal quark correlation functions are analyzed in quenched lattice QCD for two values of temperature above the critical temperature (Tc) for deconfinement, T=1.5Tc and 3Tc. A two-pole ansatz for the quark spectral function is used to determine the bare quark mass and the momentum dependence of excitation spectra on large lattices of size up to 128^3x16. The dependence of the quark correlator on these parameters as well as the finite volume dependence of the excitation energies are analyzed in detail in order to examine the reliability of our analysis. Our results suggest the existence of qu…
We show how repulsive interactions of deconfined quarks as well as confined hadrons have an influence on the baryon number susceptibilities and the curvature of the chiral pseudo critical line in effective models of QCD. We discuss implications and constraints for the vector interaction strength from comparisons to lattice QCD and comment on earlier constraints, extracted from the curvature of the transition line of QCD and compact star observables. Our results clearly point to a strong vector repulsion in the hadronic phase and near-zero repulsion in the deconfined phase.
We sketch an effective theory for the deconfined state of QCD near Tc. This relates the behavior of the expectation value of the Polyakov loop, and its two-point functions, to the pressure. Defining the ``mass'' of three and two gluon states from the imaginary and real parts of the Polyakov loop, while this ratio is 3:2 in perturbation theory, at Tc it is 3:1. We also discuss the decay of the deconfined state into hadrons.
We use the non-perturbative Q\bar Q potential at finite temperatures derived in the Field Correlator Method to obtain binding energies for the lowest eigenstates in the Q\bar Q and QQQ systems (Q=c,b). The three--quark problem is solved by the hyperspherical method. The solution provides an estimate of the melting temperature and the radii for the different diquark and triquark bound states. In particular we find that J/ψand $ccc$ ground states survive up to T \sim 1.3 T_c, where T_c is the critical temperature, while the corresponding bottomonium states survive even up to higher temperature, …
We calculate the quark number susceptibility in the deconfined phase of QCD using the hard thermal loop (HTL) approximation for the quark propagator. This improved perturbation theory takes into account important medium effects such as thermal quark masses and Landau damping in the quark-gluon plasma. We explicitly show that the Landau damping part in the quark propagator for spacelike quark momenta does not contribute to the quark number susceptibility due to the quark number conservation. We find that the quark number susceptibility only due to the collective quark modes deviates from that o…
We present continuum extrapolated results of charmonium and bottomonium correlators in the vector channel at several temperatures below and above $T_c$. The continuum extrapolation jointly performed with the interpolations to have physical values of $J/ψ$ and $Υ$ masses in the confined phase is based on calculations on several large quenched isotropic lattices using clover-improved Wilson valence fermions carrying different quark masses. The extrapolated lattice correlators are confronted with perturbation theory results incorporating resummed thermal effects around the threshold from pNRQCD a…
We have computed the chiral susceptibility in quark-gluon plasma in presence of finite chemical potential and weak magnetic field within hard thermal loop approximation. First we construct the massive effective quark propagator in a thermomagnetic medium. Then we obtain completely analytic expression for the chiral susceptibility in weak magnetic field approximation. In the absence of magnetic field the thermal chiral susceptibility increases in presence of finite chemical potential. The effect of thermomagnetic correction is found to be very marginal as temperature is the dominant scale in we…
We propose a method to determine the total magnetic susceptibility of strongly interacting matter by lattice QCD simulations, and present first numerical results for the theory with two light flavors, which suggest a weak magnetic activity in the confined phase and the emergence of strong paramagnetism in the deconfined, Quark-Gluon Plasma phase.
We have studied the probability of two succinct particle production mechanisms, likely to occur in the transition from the deconfined medium produced in RHIC and LHC heavy ion collisions back to the hadron gas, which is abundant at lower temperatures. Evidence has been found for in-medium fragmentation of non-equilibrated partons in the deconfined medium as well as bound state formation in the quark-gluon phase itself, as described by lattice QCD . Through the comparison to PNJL model calculations we attempt to quantify an extended phase of mixed degrees of freedom in a temperature range just …
Magnetic susceptibility in the deconfined phase of QCD is calculated in a closed form using a recent general expression for the quark gas pressure in magnetic field. Quark selfenergies are entering the result via Polyakov line factors and ensure the total paramagnetic effect, increasing with temperature. A generalized form of magnetic susceptibility in nonzero magnetic field suitable for experimental and lattice measurements is derived, showing a good agreement with available lattice data.
We determine the magnetic susceptibility of thermal QCD matter by means of first principles lattice simulations using staggered quarks with physical masses. A novel method is employed that only requires simulations at zero background field, thereby circumventing problems related to magnetic flux quantization. After a careful continuum limit extrapolation, diamagnetic behavior (negative susceptibility) is found at low temperatures and strong paramagnetism (positive susceptibility) at high temperatures. We revisit the decomposition of the magnetic susceptibility into spin- and orbital angular mo…
I discuss three topics in physics of massive (two solar-mass and larger) neutron stars containing deconfined quark matter: (i) the equation of state of deconfined dense quark matter and its color superconducting phases, (ii) the thermal evolution of stars with quark cores, (iii) color-magnetic flux tubes in type-II superconducting quark matter and their dynamics driven by Aharonov-Bohm interactions with unpaired fermions.
Our quasi-particle model for deconfined matter near T_c is reviewed. The extrapolation of lattice QCD data to a finite baryo-chemical potential is discussed. Determined by the chiral transition temperature T_c, the resulting equation of state of neutral and beta-stable deconfined matter is soft and limits size and mass of pure quark stars.
We investigate topology in lattice simulations of QCD with two flavours of dynamical Wilson fermions. At various sea quark masses we find reasonable agreement between results for the topological charge from fermionic and gluonic definitions, the latter with cooling. We study correlations of the topological charge with light hadronic observables and find effects in the flavour singlet pseudoscalar channel. The quark mass dependence of the topological susceptibility, $χ$, is in agreement with the leading order small m_pi expectation, chi=(f_pi m_pi)^2/4.
We discuss properties of statistical QCD relevant in Fermi phase space model analysis of strange hadron production experimental data. We argue that the analysis results interpreted using established statistical QCD properties are demonstrating formation of the color deconfined state of matter in relativistic heavy ion collisions at highest CERN-SPS energies and at BNL-RHIC, comprising deconfined matter composed of nearly massless quarks and gluons, in statistical equilibrium.
The topological susceptibility of the SU(3) pure gauge theory is calculated in the deconfined phase at temperatures up to $10T_c$. At such large temperatures the susceptibility is suppressed, topologically non-trivial configurations are extremely rare. Thus, direct lattice simulations are not feasible. The density of states (DoS) method is designed to simulate rare events, we present an application of the DoS method to the problem of high temperature topological susceptibility. We reconstruct the histogram of the charge sectors that one could have obtained in a naive importance sampling. Our f…
Recent work explores the candidate phases of the 4d adjoint quantum chromodynamics (QCD$_4$) with an SU(2) gauge group and two massless adjoint Weyl fermions. Both Cordova-Dumitrescu and Bi-Senthil propose possible low energy 4d topological quantum field theories (TQFTs) to saturate the higher 't Hooft anomalies of adjoint QCD$_4$ under a renormalization-group (RG) flow from high energy. In this work, we generalize the symmetry-extension method [arXiv:1705.06728] to higher symmetries, and formulate higher group cohomology and cobordism theory approach to construct higher-symmetric TQFTs. We pr…
We consider a multi-string configuration that provides a new way to compute the expectation value of the Polyakov loop in a five-dimensional framework known as AdS/QCD. The obtained results are in reasonably good agreement with those obtained by lattice simulations for pure SU(3) gauge theory and also by the usual single string configuration.
An effective quasiparticle description of deconfined QCD thermodynamics compatible with both finite temperature nonperturbative lattice data and the asymptotic limit is generalized to finite chemical potential. Implications for the N_f = 4 flavor lattice data extended to mu \neq 0 as well as for deconfined matter with realistic quark masses are considered.
We present an analysis of the quark spectral function above and below the critical temperature for deconfinement performed at zero and non-zero momentum in quenched lattice QCD using clover improved Wilson fermions in Landau gauge. It is found that the temporal quark correlation function in the deconfined phase near the critical temperature is well reproduced by a two-pole ansatz for the spectral function. This indicates that excitation modes of the quark field have small decay rates. The bare quark mass and momentum dependence of the spectral function is analyzed with this ansatz. In the chir…
Non-equilibrium corrections in a hot QCD medium modify the "hard thermal loops" (HTL) which determine the resummed propagators for gluons with soft momenta as well as the Debye screening and Landau damping mass scales. We focus on bulk viscous corrections to a thermal fixed point. The screening and damping mass scales are sensitive to the bulk pressure and perhaps to (pseudo-) critical dynamical scaling of the bulk viscosity in the vicinity of a second-order critical point. This would affect the properties of quarkonium bound states in the deconfined phase.
A quasiparticle description of the thermodynamics of deconfined matter, reproducing both the perturbative limit and nonperturbative lattice QCD data at finite temperature, is generalized to finite chemical potential. By a flow equation resulting from Maxwell's relation, the equation of state is extended from zero to non-zero quark densities. The impact of the massive strange flavor is considered and implications for cold, charge-neutral deconfined matter in $β$-equilibrium in compact stars are given.
We consider the chiral condensate in the baryonic dense medium using the generalized Sakai-Sugimoto model. It is defined as the vacuum expectation value of open Wilson line that is proposed to be calculated by use of the area of world-sheet instanton. We evaluate it in confined as well as deconfined phase. In both phases, the chiral condensate has a minimum as a function of baryon density. In the deconfined phase, taking into account the chiral symmetry restoration, we classify the behavior of chiral condensate into three types. One can set the parameter of the theory such that the results, in…
We study the topological susceptibility, chi, in two flavour lattice QCD. We find clear evidence for the expected suppression of chi at small quark mass. The estimate of the pion decay constant, f_pi = 105 +/-5 +18/-10 MeV, is consistent with the experimental value of approximately 93 MeV. We compare chi to the large-N_c prediction and find consistency over a large range of quark masses.
We derive a novel model-independent result for the pion susceptibility in QCD via the isovector-pseudoscalar vacuum polarisation. In the neighbourhood of the chiral-limit, the pion susceptibility can be expressed as a sum of two independent terms. The first expresses the pion-pole contribution. The second is identical to the vacuum chiral susceptibility, which describes the response of QCD's ground-state to a fluctuation in the current-quark mass. In this result one finds a straightforward explanation of a mismatch between extant estimates of the pion susceptibility.
We investigate the QCD magnetic susceptibility chi_q for flavor SU(2) at finite temperature (T) beyond the chiral limit, using the liquid instanton model, defined in Euclidean space and modified by the T-dependent caloron solution. The background electromagnetic fields are induced to the QCD vacuum, employing the Schwinger method. We first compute the scalar (chiral) and tensor condensates as functions of T as well the current-quark mass m, signaling the correct universal chiral restoration patterns. It turns out that chi_q, given by the ratio of the two condensates, is a smoothly decreasing f…
We investigate the effect of a non-zero magnetic field on the chiral condensate using a holographic QCD approach. We extend the model proposed by Iatrakis, Kiritsis and Paredes in arXiv:1010.1364 that realises chiral symmetry breaking dynamically from 5d tachyon condensation. We calculate the chiral condensate, magnetisation and susceptibilities for the confined and deconfined phases. The model leads, in the probe approximation, to magnetic catalysis of chiral symmetry breaking in both confined and deconfined phases. In the chiral limit, $m_q=0$, we find that in the deconfined phase a sufficie…
Assuming a first-order chiral transition scenario, we study the process of phase conversion driven by homogeneous nucleation. We adopt a quasiparticle model whose parameters are fit to lattice QCD data to describe the pressure at high temperature in the deconfined sector, and a bag model equation of state for pions in the low-temperature sector. We compute the critical radius and nucleation rate in the thin-wall approximation, and compare the results to the ones obtained using the bag model and the linear $σ$ model.
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 QCD topological observables are essential inputs to obtain theoretical predictions about axion phenomenology, which are of utmost importance for current and future experimental searches for this particle. Among them, we focus on the topological susceptibility, related to the axion mass. We present lattice results for the topological susceptibility in QCD at high temperatures obtained by discretizing this observable via spectral projectors on eigenmodes of the staggered Dirac operator, and we compare them with those obtained with the standard gluonic definition. The adoption of the spectral…
Based on the infrared improved soft-wall AdS/QCD model which can lead to a consistent prediction for the mass spectra of light resonance mesons, we extend it to the finite temperature system and carry out the calculation for the quark number susceptibility with finite quark mass. As a consequence, we show that the quark number susceptibility grows rapidly with a continuous blow-up in a narrow temperature interval as the temperature increases, and there is a peak when the temperature is around $T \simeq 160 \sim 190$ MeV depending slightly on the models, the resulting critical temperature is ab…
We study the drag and diffusion coefficients of the charm quark in the deconfined matter produced in the ultra-relativistic collisions by taking the Color String Percolation Model (CSPM) approach. CSPM, being a QCD-inspired model, can give us essential information about the hot and dense system produced in ultra-relativistic collisions. With the information on initial percolation temperature and percolation density, we estimate the relaxation time ($τ_{c}$), drag coefficient ($γ$), transverse momentum diffusion coefficient ($B_{0}$), and spatial diffusion coefficient ($D_{s}$) of charm quark i…
Recent lattice data from CP-PACS, UKQCD, SESAM/TXL and the Pisa group regarding the quark mass dependence of the topological susceptibility in 2-flavour QCD are compared to each other and to theoretical expectations. The latter get specified by referring to the QCD finite-volume partition function with ``granularity'' which accounts for the entropy brought by instantons and anti-instantons. The chiral condensate in $N_f=2$ QCD, if determined by this method, turns out surprisingly large.
We recently obtained an estimate of the axion mass based on the hypothesis that axions make up most of the dark matter in the universe. A key ingredient for this calculation was the temperature-dependence of the topological susceptibility of full QCD. Here we summarize the calculation of the susceptibility in a range of temperatures from well below the finite temperature cross-over to around 2 GeV. The two main difficulties of the calculation are the unexpectedly slow convergence of the susceptibility to its continuum limit and the poor sampling of nonzero topological sectors at high temperatu…
We compute the topological susceptibility of $N_f=2+1$ QCD with physical quark masses in the high-temperature phase, using numerical simulations of the theory discretized on a space-time lattice. More precisely we estimate the topological susceptibility for five temperatures in the range from $\sim200$ MeV up to $\sim600$ MeV, adopting the spectral projectors definition of the topological charge based on the staggered Dirac operator. This strategy turns out to be effective in reducing the large lattice artifacts which affect the standard gluonic definition, making it possible to perform a reli…
We present a study of the topological susceptibility $χ$ on the lattice for full QCD with 2 and 4 flavours of staggered fermions at zero and finite temperature T. We find that $χ$ presents a sharp drop across the deconfinement transition. We also study the dependence of $χ$ on the quark mass at T=0: we have no conclusive evidence for the expected chiral behaviour.
We study the effect of a finite quark mass on the quark number susceptibility in the framework of holographic QCD. We work in a bottom-up model with a deformed AdS black hole and D3/D7 model to calculate the quark number susceptibility at finite temperature with/without a finite quark chemical potential. As expected the finite quark mass suppresses the quark number susceptibility. We find that at high temperatures $T\ge 600$ MeV the quark number susceptibility of light quarks and heavy quarks are almost equal in the bottom-up model. This indicates that the heavy quark like charm contribution t…
