I present a numerical study of the crossover between the low temperature chirally broken phase and the high temperature chirally restored phase in $SU(N_c)$ gauge theory with $N_c=3-5$ colors and $N_f=2$ degenerate fermion flavors. Fermion masses span a range of intermediate values (represented by the squared ratio of pseudoscalar to vector meson masses $(m_{PS}/m_V)^2\sim 0.25$ to 0.63). Observables include the temperature dependent chiral condensate and screening masses. At each fermion mass these quantities show nearly identical temperature dependence across $N_c$.
We draw the three-flavor phase diagram as a function of light- and strange-quark masses for both zero and imaginary quark-number chemical potential, using the Polyakov-loop extended Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model with an effective four-quark vertex depending on the Polyakov loop. The model prediction is qualitatively consistent with 2+1 flavor lattice QCD prediction at zero chemical potential and with degenerate three-flavor lattice QCD prediction at imaginary chemical potential.
We discuss the QCD critical point at finite density through the study of many flavor QCD, in which two light flavors and Nf massive flavors exist. Performing simulations of QCD with two flavors of improved Wilson fermions, we calculate probability distribution functions of many flavor QCD at finite temperature and density. The dynamical effects of massive flavors and the chemical potential are added using the reweighting technique. From the shape of the distribution functions, we determine the critical surface separating the first order transition and crossover regions in the parameter space o…
We perform lattice numerical simulations to study the phase transition of QCD at finite temperature to clarify the nature of the transition of massless two flavor QCD. We investigate QCD with two light and Nf heavy quarks instead of two-flavor QCD, and focus on the light quark mass dependence of the critical heavy mass, below which the transition is of first order. The heavy quarks are incorporated into two flavor configurations in the form of the hopping parameter expansion through the reweighting technique. The nature of the transition is identified by the shape of the constraint effective p…
We discuss the flavor dependence of the pressure and critical temperature calculated in QCD with 2, 2+1 and 3 flavors using improved gauge and staggered fermion actions on lattices with temporal extent Nt=4. For T > 2 Tc we find that bulk thermodynamics of QCD with 2 light and a heavier strange quark is well described by 3-flavor QCD while the transition temperature is closer to that of 2-flavor QCD. Furthermore, we present evidence that the chiral critical point of 3-flavor QCD, i.e. the second order endpoint of the line of first order chiral phase transitions, belongs to the universality cla…
We present the results from full QCD simulations with four flavors of light stag gered dynamical quarks on {\it {\it QCDSP}} supercomputer. Previous results are reproduced and the simulation reported here yields new results consistent with o ur previous runs. The hadron spectrum obtained with Wilson valence fermions reported here will allow us to determine if our earlier conclusions are independent of lattice form alism.
We present possible indications for flavor separation during the QCD crossover transition based on continuum extrapolated lattice QCD calculations of higher order susceptibilities. We base our findings on flavor specific quantities in the light and strange quark sector. We propose a possible experimental verification of our prediction, based on the measurement of higher order moments of identified particle multiplicities. Since all our calculations are performed at zero baryochemical potential, these results are of particular relevance for the heavy ion program at the LHC.
We calculate the transition temperature in 2 and 3-flavor QCD using improved gauge and staggered fermion actions on lattices with temporal extent Nt=4. We find Tc=173(8)MeV and 154(8)MeV for nf=2 and 3, respectively. In the case of 3-flavor QCD we present evidence that the chiral critical point, i.e. the second order endpoint of the line of first order chiral phase transitions, belongs to the universality class of the 3d Ising model.
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.
This note is based on our recent results on QCD with varying number of flavors of fundamental fermions. Topics include unusual, strong dynamics in the preconformal, confining phase, the physics of the conformal window and the role of ab-initio lattice simulations in establishing our current knowledge of the phases of many flavor QCD
We compute charmonium spectral functions in 2-flavor QCD on anisotropic lattices using the maximum entropy method. Our results suggest that the S-waves (J/psi and eta_c) survive up to temperatures close to 2Tc, while the P-waves (chi_c0 and chi_c1) melt away below 1.2Tc.
To study continuum limit of lattice QCD with many light quark flavors, we investigate the zero temperature phase structures of multi-flavor QCD. Currently a series of exploratory simulations are being performed with the number of quark flavors, $N_f $= 6, 8, and 10 on a set of lattice volumes for various quark masses. Here, we report on the current status of our simulation on a $8^4$ lattice.
I review the recent status of heavy flavor physics results from lattice QCD. In particular, I focus on the heavy-light decay constants, the bag parameters, the form factors, and the bottom quark mass. New progresses in theoretical methods are also reviewed.
We investigate baryon-baryon (BB) interactions in the 3-flavor full QCD simulations with degenerate quark masses for all flavors. The BB potentials in the orbital S-wave are extracted from the Nambu-Bethe-Salpeter wave functions measured on the lattice. We observe strong flavor-spin dependences of the BB potentials at short distances. In particular, a strong repulsive core exists in the flavor-octet and spin-singlet channel(the 8_s representation), while an attractive core appears in the flavor singlet channel (the 1 representation). We discuss the relation of such flavor-spin dependence with …
We discuss hybrid Monte Carlo algorithms for odd-flavor lattice QCD simulations. The algorithms include a polynomial approximation which enables us to simulate odd-flavor QCD in the framework of the hybrid Monte Carlo algorithm. In order to make the algorithms exact, the correction factor to the polynomial approximation is also included in an economical, stochastic way. We test the algorithms for $n_f=1$, 1+1 and 2+1 flavors and compare results with other algorithms.
We have calculated the step scaling function and the running coupling of QCD in the Schroedinger functional scheme with four flavors of O(a) improved Wilson quarks. Comparisons of our non-perturbative results with 2-loop and 3-loop perturbation theory as well as with non-perturbative data for only two flavors are made.
We present preliminary results of an ongoing lattice QCD computation of the spectrum of $D$ mesons and $D_s$ mesons and of charmonium using 2+1+1 flavors of twisted mass sea and valence quarks.
The CP-PACS and JLQCD Collaborations have been made systematic studies of lattice QCD carrying out both chiral and continuum extrapolations. Importance of dynamical quark effects has been clarified by a comparison of quenched QCD and two flavor full QCD simulations. In two flavor simulations, the dynamical effects of $u$ and $d$ quarks are taken into account, but the third quark $s$ is still treated in a quenched approximation. As the final step towards a fully realistic lattice simulation of QCD, two collaborations started a joint project of three flavor QCD, concentrating all big computers a…
We compare the performances of the exact one-flavor algorithm (EOFA) and the rational hybrid Monte Carlo algorithm (RHMC), for dynamical simulations of lattice QCD with domain-wall fermion.
We investigate the phase structure of (2+Nf)-flavor QCD, where two light flavors and Nf massive flavors exist, to discuss the feasibility of the electroweak baryogenesis in realistic technicolor scenario and to understand properties of finite density QCD. Because an appearance of a first order phase transition at finite temperature is a necessary condition for the baryogenesis, it is important to study the nature of finite temperature phase transition. Applying the reweighting method, the probability distribution function of the plaquette is calculated in the many-flavor QCD. Through the shape…
We present our progress report on 1+1+1 flavor QCD+QED simulation at the physical point. Calculations are carried out with 2+1 flavor QCD gauge configurations generated by the PACS-CS Collaboration. The dynamical QED effect and the up-down quark mass difference are incorporated by the reweighting technique. We also discuss some physics results.
We have studied the 3-flavor, finite temperature, QCD phase transition with staggred fermions on an $ N_t=4$ lattice. By studying a variety of quark masses we have located the critical point, $m_c$, where the first order 3-flavor transition ends as lying in the region $0.32 \le m_c \le 0.35$ in lattice units
We investigate baryon-baryon (BB) interactions in the 3-flavor full QCD simulations with degenerate quark masses for all flavors. The BB potentials in the orbital S-wave are extracted from the Nambu-Bethe-Salpeter wave functions measured on the lattice. We observe strong flavor-spin dependences of the BB potentials at short distances. In particular, a strong repulsive core exists in the flavor-octet and spin-singlet channel (the 8_s representation), while an attractive core appears in the flavor singlet channel (the 1 representation). We discuss a relation of such flavor-spin dependence with t…
We present results for the pseudoscalar meson masses and decay constants on 2+1 flavor DWF configurations with different sea quark masses and an inverse lattice spacing of 1.6(1) GeV, with a focus on chiral fits at small quark masses. The calculation is done on 16^3x32x8 lattices generated with the DBW2 gauge action.
We have been examining the phenomenon of string breaking in QCD with two flavors of dynamical staggered quarks. We construct a transfer matrix from a combination of ``string'' and ``two-meson'' channels. Preliminary results with low statistics show the expected signs of string breaking.
In the search for a realistic walking technicolor model, QCD with many flavors is an attractive candidate. From the series of studies by the LatKMI collaboration, we present updated results of the scaling properties of various hadron spectra, including the (pseudo)scalar, vector, and baryon channels, for $N_f=8$ QCD analyzed with the HISQ action. By comparing these with $N_f=12$ QCD, which has properties consistent with conformality, possible signals of walking dynamics are discussed. We also present a preliminary result of the flavor-singlet pseudoscalar mass in many-flavor QCD.
We study the finite temperature phase transition of four and two flavor staggered fermions with hypercubic smeared link actions. These preliminary studies suggest that the improved flavor symmetry of the fermionic action can have a significant effect on the finite temperature phase diagram.
We present further data in search of a parity-flavor-breaking phase in simulations of dynamical QCD with two flavors of light Wilson fermions in the strong coupling region. This is done on lattice sizes of 4^4 an up to 10^4 for a variety of values of beta and kappa as well as the coefficient, h, of an explicit breaking term included in the action. We confirm the existence of a region in the beta-kappa plane where such a phase exists at beta=6/g^2 smaller than 5.0 and above kappa_c.
The first results on lattice at finite temperature $T$ and chemical potential $μ$ with 2+1 flavors of Wilson quarks are presented. We have studied the dependence of chiral phase transition and deconfinement phase transition on quark mass. Finite volume size analysis and Binder cumulants are used to determine the properties of phase transition. Phase diagram of QCD with 2+1 flavors of Wilson quarks are presented.
We analyze the pseudo-critical behavior of three-flavor QCD using highly improved staggered quarks (HISQ) on lattices with temporal extent $N_τ=8$ and for quark masses corresponding to a pseudoscalar Goldstone mass in the range $80 ~ {\rm MeV} ~ \lesssim ~ m_π~ \lesssim ~ 140 ~ {\rm MeV}$. Our findings are consistent with the occurrence of a second order chiral phase transition at vanishing values of the quark masses. The chiral phase transition temperature at this finite value of the lattice spacing is determined to be $T_c = 98_{-6}^{+3}~{\rm MeV}$. A comparison with a corresponding analysis…
We present results for the mass of the flavor singlet meson calculated on two-flavor full QCD configurations generated by the CP-PACS full QCD project. We also investigate topological charge fluctuations and their dependence on the sea quark mass.
This paper is part of a program of investigation of the chiral transition in Nf=2 QCD, started in Phys.Rev.D72:114510,2005. Progress is reported on the understanding of some possible systematic errors. A direct test of first order scaling is presented.
We extend our earlier results concerning the breaking of the U_A(1) symmetry in finite temperature QCD. In particular, we use topological arguments to investigate the chiral limit.
We report on the status of our QCD thermodynamics project. It is performed on the QCDOC machine at Brookhaven National Laboratory and the APEnext machine at Bielefeld University. Using a 2+1 flavor formulation of QCD at almost realistic quark masses we calculated several thermodynamical quantities. In this proceeding we show the susceptibilites of the chiral condensate and the Polyakov loop, the static quark potential and the spatial string tension.
I present some preliminary calculations of B_K on 2+1 flavor domain-wall fermion lattices from the QCDOC, including a set of 16^3x32x8 lattices with a^{-1} near 1.6 GeV. Although a final result awaits the production of a much longer run, I will compare this preliminary value to previous results.
We report the current status of our systematic studies of the QCD thermodynamics by lattice QCD simulations with two flavors of improved Wilson quarks. We evaluate the critical temperature of two flavor QCD in the chiral limit at zero chemical potential and show the preliminary result. Also we discuss fluctuations at none-zero temperature and density by calculating the quark number and isospin susceptibilities and their derivatives with respect to chemical potential.
Recent work by Armoni, Shifman, and Veneziano suggests a large-N equivalence between supersymmetric Yang-Mills Theory and one-flavor QCD. One consequence of this "orientifold projection" is that scalar and pseudoscalar mesons in one-flavor QCD should have degenerate mass since they lie within the same Wess-Zumino supermultiplet. We use lattice calculations to investigate the mass shifts caused by "double-hairpin" annihilation diagrams in quenched QCD to test for this degeneracy. Similar quark-antiquark annihilation processes are studied in the 2-dimensional CP(N-1) model with quenched fermions…
A Higgs description for the QCD vacuum in the limit of two quark flavors is proposed. Complete ``spontaneous breaking'' of color symmetry is realized by condensation of an adjoint quark-antiquark and a quark-quark pair. The vacuum is invariant under isospin symmetry applying color and flavor transformations simultaneously. All elementary excitations acquire integral charges. The dressed microscopic quark and gluon degrees of freedom can be identified with the macroscopic baryon and vector meson degrees of freedom. In addition to the nucleons we find soliton--type fermions with integer isospin.…
We present further analyses of the finite-temperature phase structure of lattice QCD with the Wilson quark action based on spontaneous breakdown of parity-flavor symmetry. Results are reported on (i) an explicit demonstration of spontaneous breakdown of parity-flavor symmetry beyond the critical line, (ii) phase structure and order of chiral transition for the case of $N_f=4$ flavors, and (iii) approach toward the continuum limit.
Chiral phase transition of two flavor QCD at finite quark masses is known to be crossover except near the chiral limit, but it can turn to a first order transition when adding many extra flavors. This property is used to explore the nature of the phase transition of massless two flavor QCD using lattice numerical simulations. The extra heavy flavors being incorporated in the form of the hopping parameter expansion through the reweighting, the number of the extra flavors and their masses appear only in a single parameter, defined by $h$. We determine the critical value of the parameter, at whic…
The chiral transition for two-flavor QCD is predicted to be in the same universality class as the 3d O(4) model. This prediction is verified in the Wilson case, but not for the staggered-fermion case. The comparison is usually done assuming infinite-volume behavior. Here we make an analysis of existing staggered-fermion data using finite-size scaling and normalizing the QCD data. We find better agreement for larger quark masses.
Aiming to understand the phase structure of lattice QCD at nonzero temperature and density, we study the phase transitions of QCD in an extended parameter space, where the number of flavor and quark masses are considered as parameters. Performing simulations of 2 flavor QCD and using the reweighting method, we investigate (2+Nf) flavor QCD at finite density, where two light flavors and Nf massive flavors exist. Calculating probability distribution functions, we determine the critical surface terminating first order phase transitions in the parameter space of the light quark mass, the heavy qua…
We present a summary of our results for the light hadron spectrum in quenched lattice QCD and preliminary ones in two-flavor full QCD. For the quenched hadron spectrum we find that the mass formulae predicted by quenched chiral perturbation theory(QChPT) give a good description of our results. Employing the QChPT mass formulae for chiral extrapolations we conclude that the mass spectrum in the continuum limit deviates unambiguously and systematically from experiment. For our two-flavor full QCD results we focus on the dynamical quark effects on the light hadron spectrum.
We compute the condensate in QCD with two flavors of dynamical fermions using numerical simulation. The simulations use overlap fermions, and the condensate is extracted by fitting the distribution of low lying eigenvalues of the Dirac operator in sectors of fixed topological charge to the predictions of Random Matrix Theory.
We study aspects concerning numerical simulations of Lattice QCD with two flavors of dynamical Ginsparg-Wilson quarks with degenerate masses. A Hybrid Monte Carlo algorithm is described and the formula for the fermionic force is derived for two specific implementations. The implementation with optimal rational approximation method is favored both in CPU time and memory consumption.
We study thermodynamic properties of 2+1 flavor QCD with improved Wilson quarks coupled with the RG improved Iwasaki glue, using the fixed scale approach. We present the results for the equation of state, renormalized Polyakov loop, and chiral condensate.
We consider O(a) improvement for two flavor lattice QCD. The improvement term in the action is computed non-perturbatively for a large range of the bare coupling. The position of the critical line and higher order lattice artifacts remaining after improvement are estimated. We also discuss the behavior of the HMC algorithm in our simulations.
A review of QCD-based theory approaches to study the heavy-flavor and exotic hadrons is given. The focus is on the results from lattice QCD and from lattice QCD complemented by effective field theories. Both approaches are first briefly introduced and applied in few examples. Then the status of various hadrons sectors is presented.
I present a method which can be used to locate the expected critical endpoint of the phase diagram of QCD with two light quark flavors. I illustrate the ideas on a suitable Random Matrix Model and show preliminary results in QCD
We investigate baryon-baryon (BB) interactions in the flavor SU(3) symmetric world, by using the 3-flavor full QCD simulations. In the SU(3) limit, six independent two-baryon states exist for a given orbital angular momentum. We forcus on S-wave states and extract BB potentials using the method recently developed. We discuss the flavor dependence of the potentials, in particular, the strength of the repulsion at short distance. We find that the SU(3) flavor structure of the repulsive core is compatible with that expected from the Pauli principle for the quarks.
We have determined the non-perturbative O(a)-improvement coefficient c_sw for four flavors of Wilson quarks with the plaquette gauge action in a range of beta >= 5. The data are fitted with several Pade approximation formulae to get an impression of the stability. A small extrapolation below beta=5 seems acceptable.
Studying SU(3) gauge theories with increasing number of light fermions is relevant both for understanding the strong dynamics of QCD and for constructing strongly interacting extensions of the Standard Model (e.g. UV completions of composite Higgs models). In order to contrast these many-flavors strongly interacting theories with QCD, we study the flavor-singlet spectrum as an interesting probe. In fact, some composite Higgs models require the Higgs boson to be the lightest flavor-singlet scalar in the spectrum of a strongly interacting new sector with a well defined hierarchy with the rest of…
We determine the location of the second order endpoint of the line of first order chiral phase transition in 3-flavor QCD at vanishing chemical potential. Using Ferrenberg-Swendsen reweighting for two values of the quark mass we determine the dependence of the transition line on the chemical potential and locate the chiral critical point. For both quantities we find a significant quark mass dependence.
LatKMI Collaboration discusses the topological insights in many-flavor QCD on the lattice. We explore walking/conformal/confining phase in $N_\mathrm{f}$ = 4, 8 and 12 (in particular $N_\mathrm{f}$ = 8) lattice QCD via the topological charge and susceptibility, eigenvalues and anomalous dimension.
