The temperature of the chiral restoration phase transition at 130 MeV as well as the temperature of the center symmetry ("deconfinement") phase transition in a pure glue theory at 300 MeV are two independent temperatures and their interplay determines a structure of different regimes of hot QCD. Given a chiral spin symmetry of the color charge and of the chromoelectric interaction we can conclude from observed symmetries of spatial and temporal correlators of N_F=2 QCD with domain wall Dirac operator at physical quark masses that above the chiral symmetry restoration crossover around T_pc but below rougly 3T_pc there should exist an intermediate regime (the stringy fluid) of hot QCD that is characterized by approximate chiral spin symmetry and where degrees of freedom are chirally symmetric quarks bound into color singlet objects by the chromoelectric field. Above this intermediate regime the color charge and the chromoelectric field are Debye screened and one observes a transition to QGP with magnetic confinement.
Based on a complete set of $J = 0$ and $J=1$ spatial isovector correlation functions calculated with $N_F = 2$ domain wall fermions we identify an intermediate temperature regime of $T \sim 220 - 500$ MeV ($1.2T_c$--$2.8T_c$), where chiral symmetry is restored but the correlators are not yet compatible with a simple free quark behavior. More specifically, in the temperature range $T \sim 220 - 500$ MeV we identify a multiplet structure of spatial correlators that suggests emergent $SU(2)_{CS}$ and $SU(4)$ symmetries, which are not symmetries of the free Dirac action. The symmetry breaking effe…
Inspired by recent lattice measurements, we determine the short-distance (a << r << 1/pi T) as well as large-frequency (1/a >> omega >> pi T) asymptotics of scalar (trace anomaly) and pseudoscalar (topological charge density) correlators at 2-loop order in hot Yang-Mills theory. The results are expressed in the form of an Operator Product Expansion. We confirm and refine the determination of a number of Wilson coefficients; however some discrepancies with recent literature are detected as well, and employing the correct values might help, on the qualitative level, to understand some of the fea…
We propose a novel algorithm for calculating multi-baryon correlation functions on the lattice. By considering the permutation of quarks (Wick contractions) and color/spinor contractions simultaneously, we construct a unified index list for the contraction where the redundancies in the original contraction are eliminated. We find that a significant reduction in the computational cost of correlators is achieved, e.g., by a factor of 192 for $^3$H and $^3$He nuclei, and a factor of 20736 for the $^4$He nucleus, without assuming isospin symmetry. A further reduction is possible by exploiting isos…
Lattice measurements of spatial correlation functions of the operators FF and FF-dual in thermal SU(3) gauge theory have revealed a clear difference between the two channels at "intermediate" distances, x ~ 1/(pi T). This is at odds with the AdS/CFT limit which predicts the results to coincide. On the other hand, an OPE analysis at short distances (x << 1/(pi T)) as well as effective theory methods at long distances (x >> 1/(pi T)) suggest differences. Here we study the situation at intermediate distances by determining the time-averaged spatial correlators through a 2-loop computation. We do …
In lattice QCD, the Maximum Entropy Method can be used to reconstruct spectral functions from euclidean correlators obtained in numerical simulations. We show that at finite temperature the most commonly used algorithm, employing Bryan's method, is inherently unstable at small energies and give a modification that avoids this. We demonstrate this approach using the vector current-current correlator obtained in quenched QCD at finite temperature. Our first results indicate a small electrical conductivity above the deconfinement transition.
We study spatial isovector meson correlators in $N_f=2$ QCD with dynamical domain-wall fermions on $32^3\times 8$ lattices at temperatures up to 380 MeV with various quark masses. We measure the correlators of spin-one isovector operators including vector, axial-vector, tensor and axial-tensor. At temperatures above $T_c$ we observe an approximate degeneracy of the correlators in these channels, which is unexpected because some of them are not related under $SU(2)_L \times SU(2)_R$ nor $U(1)_A$ symmetries. The observed approximate degeneracy suggests emergent $SU(2)_{CS}$ (chiral-spin) and $SU…
Correlation functions of the FF and F\tilde{F} operators in hot SU(3) Yang-Mills theory have recently been studied both on the lattice and in perturbation theory, and the results subsequently compared to the strong coupling limit of large-N_c N=4 Super Yang-Mills theory, available through the AdS/CFT correspondence. Here, we review the perturbative calculations, covering both Euclidean spatial correlators and the UV limit of spectral densities, and comment on the emerging physical picture as well as on possible extensions of the present studies.
A popular observable in finite-temperature lattice QCD is the so-called singlet quark-antiquark free energy, conventionally defined in Coulomb gauge. In an effort to interpret the existing numerical data on this observable, we compute it at order O(alpha_s^2) in continuum, and analyze the result at various distance scales. At short distances (r << 1/pi T) the behaviour matches that of the gauge-independent zero-temperature potential; on the other hand at large distances (r >> 1/pi T) the singlet free energy appears to have a gauge-fixing related power-law tail. At infinite distance the result …
We study spatial isovector meson correlators in $N_f=2$ QCD with dynamical domain-wall fermions on $32^3\times 8$ lattices at temperatures $T=220-380$ MeV. We measure the correlators of spin-one ($J=1$) operators including vector, axial-vector, tensor and axial-tensor. Restoration of chiral $U(1)_A$ and $SU(2)_L \times SU(2)_R$ symmetries of QCD implies degeneracies in vector--axial-vector ($SU(2)_L \times SU(2)_R$) and tensor--axial-tensor ($U(1)_A$) pairs, which are indeed observed at temperatures above $T_c$. Moreover, we observe an approximate degeneracy of all $J=1$ correlators with incre…
We propose a model for the propagation of a heavy-quark in a hot plasma, to be viewed as a first step towards a full description of the dynamics of heavy quark systems in a quark-gluon plasma, including bound state formation. The heavy quark is treated as a non relativistic particle interacting with a fluctuating field, whose correlator is determined by a hard thermal loop approximation. This approximation, which concerns only the medium in which the heavy quark propagates, is the only one that is made, and it can be improved. The dynamics of the heavy quark is given exactly by a quantum mecha…
We extend the concept of strange correlators, defined for symmetry-protected phases in [You et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 247202 (2014)], to topological phases of matter by taking the inner product between string-net ground states and product states. The resulting two-dimensional partition functions are shown to be either critical or symmetry broken, as the corresponding transfer matrices inherit all matrix product operator symmetries of the string-net states. For the case of critical systems, those non-local matrix product operator symmetries are the lattice remnants of topological conformal …
The behavior of bottomonium state correlators at non-zero temperature, $140.4 (β= 6.664) \le T \le 221 (β= 7.280)$ (MeV), where the transition temperature is $154(9)$ (MeV), is studied, using lattice NRQCD on $48^3 \times 12$ HotQCD HiSQ action configurations with light dynamical $N_f = 2 + 1$ ($m_{u,s}/m_s = 0.05$) staggered quarks. In order to understand finite temperature effects on quarkonium states, zero temperature behavior of bottomonium correlators is compared based on $32^4$ ($β= 6.664, 6.800$ and $6.950$) and $48^3 \times 64$ ($β= 7.280)$ lattices. We find that temperature effects on…
We have studied, for the first time, screening masses obtained from glueball-like correlators in Quantum Chromodynamics with four light dynamical flavours of quarks in the temperature range 1.5T_c < T < 3T_c, where T_c is the temperature at which the chiral transition occurs. We have also studied pion-like and sigma-like screening masses, and found that they are degenerate in the entire range of T. These obstruct perturbative dimensional reduction since the lowest glueball screening mass is heavier than them. Extrapolation of our results suggests that this obstruction may affect the entire ran…
Recently, via calculation of spatial correlators of $J=0,1$ isovector operators using a chirally symmetric Dirac operator within $N_F=2$ QCD, it has been found that QCD at temperatures $T_c - 3 T_c$ is approximately $SU(2)_{CS}$ and $SU(4)$ symmetric. The latter symmetry suggests that the physical degrees of freedom are chirally symmetric quarks bound by the chromoelectric field into color singlet objects without chromomagnetic effects. This regime of QCD has been referred to as a Stringy Fluid. Here we calculate correlators for propagation in time direction at a temperature slightly above $T_…
Extending our recent work, we report on a calculation of the vector current correlation function for light valence quarks in the deconfined phase of quenched QCD in the temperature range 1.16Tc<T<2.98Tc. After performing a systematic analysis of the in fluence of cut-off effects on light quark meson correlators using clover improved Wilson fermions, we discuss resulting constraints on the electrical conductivity in a quark gluon plasma.
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.
Thermalization of a heavy quark near rest is controlled by the correlator of two electric fields along a temporal Wilson line. We address this correlator within real-time, classical lattice Yang-Mills theory, and elaborate on the analogies that exist with the dynamics of hot QCD. In the weak-coupling limit, it can be shown analytically that the dynamics on the two sides are closely related to each other. For intermediate couplings, we carry out non-perturbative simulations within the classical theory, showing that the leading term in the weak-coupling expansion significantly underestimates the…
We study hadron correlators upon artificial restoration of the spontaneously broken chiral symmetry. In a dynamical lattice simulation we remove the lowest lying eigenmodes of the Dirac operator from the valence quark propagators and study evolution of the hadron masses obtained. All mesons and baryons in our study, except for a pion, survive unbreaking the chiral symmetry and their exponential decay signals become essentially better. From the analysis of the observed spectroscopic patterns we conclude that confinement still persists while the chiral symmetry is restored. All hadrons fall into…
Truncating the low-lying modes of the lattice Dirac operator results in an emergence of the chiral-spin symmetry $SU(2)_{CS}$ and its flavor extension $SU(2N_F)$ in hadrons. These are symmetries of the quark - chromo-electric interaction and include chiral symmetries as subgroups. Hence the quark - chromo-magnetic interaction, which breaks both symmetries, is located at least predominantly in the near - zero modes. Using as a tool the expansion of propagators into eigenmodes of the Dirac operator we here analytically study effects of a gap in the eigenmode spectrum on baryon correlators. We fi…
We present a study of charmonia in hot gluonic plasma, for temperatures upto three times the deconfinement transition temperature Tc. q \bar{q} systems with quark masses close to the charm mass and different spin-parity quantum numbers were studied on very fine isotropic lattices. The analysis of temporal correlators, and spectral functions constructed from them, shows that the J/psi and eta_c survive up to quite high temperatures, with little observable change up to 1.5 Tc, and then gradually weakening and disappearing by 3 Tc. For the scalar and axial vector channels, serious modifications a…
Recent studies on lattice QCD have shown the emergence of large symmetries at high temperature. This includes not only the restoration $SU(n_F)_L \times SU(n_F)_R$, but also the effective emergence of an unexpected symmetry group, namely $SU(2)_{CS}$, which contains $U(1)_A$ as subgroup. At the same time, at high $T$, a gap in Dirac spectrum appears. As it is argued in several works of \textit{L. Glozman et al.}, there should be a connection between a gap in the Dirac spectrum and the presence of $SU(2)_{CS}$.In this paper, we analyze whether the quark propagator can be invariant under $SU(n_F…
We study the Landau gauge propagators of the lattice SU(2) 3d adjoint Higgs model, considered as an effective theory of high temperature 4d SU(2) gauge theory. From the long distance behaviour of the propagators we extract the screening masses. The propagators are studied both in the symmetric and the broken phases of the 3d Higgs model. It is shown that the pole masses extracted from the propagators in the symmetric phase agree well with the screening masses obtained recently in finite temperature SU(2) theory, while propagators measured in the broken phase show quite a different behaviour. T…
The equation of state of pure QCD, obtained from lattice QCD, is discussed for temperatures ranging from $0.9\tc$ to $4\tc$, as well as results on screening masses, the chiral condensate, and the pion decay constant close to the deconfinement phase transition in the confined phase of QCD. The equation of state differs significantly from that of a free gas. There is little evidence of a temperature dependence in the chiral condensate or the meson properties, but perhaps some for the nucleon screening mass. Above the phase transition one sees non-perturbative effects, even though hadron correlat…
The interior of the color flux tube joining a quark pair can be probed by evaluating the correlator of pair of Polyakov loops in a vacuum modified by another Polyakov pair, in order to check the dual superconductivity conjecture which predicts a deconfined, hot core. We also point out that at the critical point of any 3D gauge theories with a continuous deconfining transition the Svetitsky-Yaffe conjecture provides us with an analytic expression of the Polyakov correlator as a function of the position of the probe inside the flux tube. Both these predictions are compared with numerical results…
