In recent years there has been much progress on the investigation of the QCD phase diagram with lattice QCD. This talk will focus on the developments in the last few years. Especially the addition of external influences and extended ranges of $T$ and $μ$ yield an increasing number of interesting results, a subset of which will be discussed. Many of these conditions are important for the understanding of both the QCD transition in the early universe and heavy ion collision experiments which are conducted for example at the LHC and RHIC. This offers many exciting opportunities for comparisons between theory and experiment.
This is an introductory review of lattice QCD with external fields. The study of external magnetic fields is one of the greatest achievements in modern lattice QCD. Large-scale simulations and detailed analyses have revealed intriguing properties of QCD in the magnetic fields. The study of external electric fields is more challenging because of a technical difficulty. We overview the successes and challenges of the lattice simulations with the electromagnetic fields. We also introduce a newly developing field, the lattice simulation of rotating QCD matters.
The aim of this review is to summarize the contemporary understanding of the QCD phase diagram as a function of temperature and baryo-chemical potential. The focus is on recent theoretical developments due to lattice simulations of the phase diagram.
We present the lattice QCD studies for baryon-baryon interactions for the first time with (almost) physical quark masses. $N_f = 2+1$ gauge configurations are generated with the Iwasaki gauge action and nonperturbatively $O(a)$-improved Wilson quark action with stout smearing on the lattice of $(96 a)^4 \simeq (8.2 {\rm fm})^4$ with $a \simeq 0.085$ fm, where $m_π\simeq 146$ MeV and $m_K \simeq 525$ MeV. Baryon forces are calculated from Nambu-Bethe-Salpeter (NBS) correlation functions using the time-dependent HAL QCD method. In this report, we first give the general overview of the theoretica…
We report our recent results on the QCD phase diagram obtained from the lattice QCD simulation. The location of the phase boundary between hadronic and QGP phases in the two-flavor QCD phase diagram is investigated. The imaginary chemical potential approach is employed, which is based on Monte Carlo simulations of the QCD with imaginary chemical potential and analytic continuation to the real chemical potential region.
Two parameters that have a strong influence on the finite temperature QCD transition, and play an important role in various physical scenarios are the quark density and the external magnetic field. The effect of these parameters on the thermal properties of QCD is discussed, and an overview of the latest lattice results is given.
We provide, for non-experts, a brief overview of holographic QCD and a review of a recent proposal of matrix-description of multi-baryon systems in holographic QCD. Based on the matrix model, we derive the baryon interaction at short distances in multi-flavor holographic QCD. We show that there is a very universal repulsive core of inter-baryon forces for generic number of flavors. This is consistent with a recent lattice QCD analysis for N_f = 2, 3 where repulsive core looks universal. We also provide a comparison of our results with the lattice QCD and the operator product expansion (OPE) an…
We extend to the clover improved lattice formulation of QCD the resummation of cactus diagrams, i.e. a certain class of tadpole-like gauge invariant diagrams. Cactus resummation yields an improved perturbative expansion. We apply it to the lattice renormalization of some two-fermion operators improving their one-loop perturbative estimates.
We show how to perform a resummation, to all orders in perturbation theory, of a certain class of gauge invariant diagrams in Lattice QCD. These diagrams are often largely responsible for lattice artifacts. Our resummation leads to an improved perturbative expansion. Applied to a number of cases of interest, this expansion yields results remarkably close to corresponding nonperturbative estimates.
The sign problem of QCD prevents standard lattice simulations to determine the phase diagram of strong interactions with a finite chemical potential directly. Complex Langevin simulations provide an alternative method to sample path integrals with complex weights. We report on our ongoing project to determine the phase diagram of QCD in the limit of heavy quarks (HDQCD) using Complex Langevin simulations.
We review the recent progress achieved in the theoretical investigation of Quantum Chromodynamics in the high temperature regime, with a focus on results achieved by lattice QCD simulations. The discussion covers the structure of the phase diagram and the properties of the strongly interacting medium at finite T and small baryon chemical potential.
I review recent Lattice results. In particular, the confinement mechanism and string breaking, glueballs and hybrid mesons as well as light hadron spectroscopy are discussed.
I discuss recent results on lattice QCD calculations with the main emphasis on the thermodynamics of the crossover region, restoration of the chiral symmetry and fluctuations of conserved charges as indicator of deconfinement, that may also be used to determine the chemical freeze-out conditions in heavy-ion collision experiments.
In recent years there has been much progress on the investigation of the QCD phase diagram with lattice QCD simulations. In this review I focus on the developments in the last two years. Especially the addition of external influences or new parameter ranges yield an increasing number of interesting results. I discuss the progress for small, finite densities from both analytical continuation and Complex Langevin simulations, for heavy quark bound states (quarkonium), the dependence on the quark masses (Columbia plot) and the influence of a magnetic field. Many of these conditions are relevant f…
Monte Carlo methods cannot probe far into the QCD phase diagram with a real chemical potential, due to the famous sign problem. Complex Langevin simulations, using adaptive step-size scaling and gauge cooling, are suited for sampling path integrals with complex weights. We report here on tests of the deconfinement transition in pure Yang-Mills SU(3) simulations and present an update on the QCD phase diagram in the limit of heavy and dense quarks.
Complex Langevin simulations provide an alternative to sample path integrals with complex weights and therefore are suited to determine the phase diagram of QCD from first principles. Adaptive step-size scaling and gauge cooling are used to improve the convergence of our simulations. We present results for the phase diagram of QCD in the limit of heavy quarks and discuss the order of the phase transitions, which are studied by varying the spatial simulation volume.
Simulations of QCD with a finite chemical potential typically lead to a severe sign problem, prohibiting any standard Monte Carlo approach. Complex Langevin simulations provide an alternative to sample path integrals with oscillating weight factors and therefore potentially enable the determination of the phase diagram of QCD. Here we present results for QCD in the limit of heavy quarks and show evidence that the phase diagram can be mapped out by direct simulation. We apply adaptive step-size scaling and adaptive gauge cooling to ensure the convergence of these simulations.
We study the density of states method to explore the phase diagram of the chiral transition on the tempeature and quark chemical potential plane. Four quark flavours are used in the analysis. Though the method is quite expensive small lattices show an indication for a triple-point connecting three different phases on the phase diagram.
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.
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.
In this review we present the current state-of-the-art on complex Langevin simulations and their implications for the QCD phase diagram. After a short summary of the complex Langevin method, we present and discuss recent developments. Here we focus on the explicit computation of boundary terms, which provide an observable that can be used to check one of the criteria of correctness explicitly. We also present the method of Dynamic Stabilization and elaborate on recent results for fully dynamical QCD.
Complex Langevin simulations provide an alternative to sample path integrals with complex weights and therefore are suited to determine the phase diagram of QCD from first principles. We use our proposed method of Dynamic Stabilisation (DS) to ensure improved convergence to the right limit and present new systematic tests of this technique. We also show results on QCD in the limit of heavy quarks and an analysis of DS compared to known results from reweighting.
We demonstrate how to locate the critical endpoint of the QCD phase transition by means of simulations at imaginary μ. For the three flavor theory, we present numerical results for the pseudo-critical line as a function of chemical potential and bare quark mass, as well as the bare quark mass dependence of the endpoint.
We present first results of a study of two flavour QCD with Wilson fermions at finite temperature. We have used tree level Symanzik improvement in both the gauge and fermion part of the action. In a first step we explore the phase diagramm on an $8^3 \times 4$ lattice, with particular emphasis on checking Aoki's conjecture with an improved action.
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…
We discuss the phase diagram of QCD in the presence of a strong background magnetic field, providing numerical evidence, based on lattice simulations of QCD with $2+1$ flavours and physical quark masses, that the QCD crossover turns into a first order phase transition for large enough magnetic field, with a critical endpoint located between $eB=4$ GeV$^2$ (where we found an analytic crossover at a pseudo-critical temperature $T_c=(98\pm3)$ MeV) and $eB=9$ GeV$^2$ (where the measured critical temperature is $T_c=(63\pm5)$ MeV).
We review our knowledge of the phase diagram of QCD as a function of temperature, chemical potential and quark masses. The presence of tricritical lines at imaginary chemical potential mu=i pi/3 T, with known scaling behaviour in their vicinity, puts constraints on this phase diagram, especially in the case of two light flavors. We show first results in our project to determine the finite-temperature behaviour in the two-flavour chiral limit.
The strong coupling limit of lattice QCD with staggered fermions has been studied for decades, both via Monte Carlo and via mean field theory. In this model, the finite density sign problem can be made mild and the full phase diagram can be obtained, even in the chiral limit. It is however desirable to understand the effect of a finite lattice gauge coupling $β$ on the phase diagram in the $μ-T$ plane in order to understand how it evolves into the phase diagram of continuum QCD. Here we discuss how to construct a partition function for non-zero lattice coupling, exact to $\mathcal{O}(β)$, and …
The thermodynamics of QCD with sufficiently heavy dynamical quarks can be described by a three-dimensional Polyakov loop effective theory, obtained after a truncated character and hopping expansion. We investigate the resulting phase diagram for low temperatures by mean field methods. Taking into account chemical potentials for both baryon number and isospin, we obtain clear signals for a liquid-gas type transition to baryon matter at $μ_I=0$ and a Bose-Einstein condensation transition at $μ_B=0$, as well as for their connection when both chemical potentials are non-zero.
We study the possible significance of four-quark states in the iso-singlet scalar mesons ($J^{PC}=0^{++}$, $I=0$) by performing two-flavor full lattice QCD simulations on an $8^3 \times 16$ lattice using the improved gauge action and the clover-improved Wilson quark action. In particular, we evaluate the propagators of molecular and tetra-quark operators together with singly disconnected diagrams. In the computation of the singly disconnected diagrams we employ the $Z_2$-noise method with the truncated eigenmode approach. We show that the quark loops given by the disconnected diagrams play an …
A comprehensive number of integrals emerging in one-loop computations in a gauge perturbation theory on the lattice with Wilson fermions at $r=1$ is computed using the Burgio--Caracciolo--Pelissetto algorithm and the FORM package. An explicit analytical form of the recursion relations needed for such computations is presented.
We evaluate properties of neutral mesons in Nf=2 dynamical simulations of TMQCD at maximal twist. The pion is explored - establishing the size of the isospin splitting (an order a^2 effect). We investigate the eta' (the Nf=2 flavour singlet pseudoscalar meson) and neutral rho and scalar mesons. We show that disconnected diagrams can be evaluated very efficiently in TMQCD using variance reduction methods.
We study lattice QCD with four flavors of staggered quarks. In the limit of infinite gauge coupling, "dual" variables can be introduced, which render the finite-density sign problem mild and allow a full determination of the $μ-T$ phase diagram by Monte Carlo simulations, also in the chiral limit. However, the continuum limit coincides with the weak coupling limit. We propose a strong-coupling expansion approach towards the continuum limit. We show first results, including the phase diagram and its chiral critical point, from this expansion truncated to next-to-leading order.
Complex Langevin simulations allow numerical studies of theories that exhibit a sign problem, such as QCD, and are thereby potentially suitable to determine the QCD phase diagram from first principles. Here we study QCD in the limit of heavy quarks for a wide range of temperatures and chemical potentials. Our results include an analysis of the adaptive gauge cooling technique, which prevents large excursions into the non-compact directions of the SL($3, \mathbb{C}$) manifold. We find that such excursions may appear spontaneously and change the statistical distribution of physical observables, …
We propose a new framework for investigating two-flavor lattice QCD with finite temperature and density by applying the Karsten-Wilczek lattice fermion, in which a species-dependent imaginary chemical potential can reduce the number of species to two without losing chiral symmetry. This lattice discretization is useful for study on finite-(T,μ) QCD since its discrete symmetries are appropriate for the case. To show its applicability, we study strong-coupling lattice QCD with temperature and chemical potential. We derive the effective potential of the scalar meson field and obtain a critical li…
In this paper we report on lattice simulations of SU(3)-QCD with non-zero chiral chemical potential. We focus on the influence of the chiral chemical potential on the confinement/deconfinement phase transition and the breaking/restoration of chiral symmetry. The simulation is carried out with dynamical Wilson fermions. We find that the critical temperature rises as the chiral chemical potential grows.
We study the QCD phase diagram in the strong coupling limit with fluctuation effects by using the auxiliary field Monte-Carlo method. We apply the chiral angle fixing technique in order to obtain finite chiral condensate in the chiral limit in finite volume. The behavior of order parameters suggests that chiral phase transition is the second order or crossover at low chemical potential and the first order at high chemical potential. Compared with the mean field results, the hadronic phase is suppressed at low chemical potential, and is extended at high chemical potential as already suggested i…
Complex Langevin simulations have been able to successfully reproduce results from Monte Carlo methods in the region where the sign problem is mild and make predictions when it is exponentially hard. We present here our study of the QCD phase diagram and the boundary between the confined and deconfined phases in the limit of heavy and dense quarks (HDQCD) for 3 different lattice volumes. We also briefly discuss instabilities encountered in our simulations.
We present results on the QCD phase diagram for small densities without reweighting. Our simulations are performed with an imaginary chemical potential mu_I for which the fermion determinant is positive. On an 8^3x4 lattice with 2 flavors of staggered quarks, we map out the pseudo-critical temperature T_c(mu_I). For mu_I/T < pi/3, this is an analytic function whose Taylor expansion converges rapidly, with truncation errors smaller than statistical ones. The result is analytically continued to give the location of the pseudo-critical line for real mu_B<500 MeV.
An overview is given of the QCDOC architecture, a massively parallel and highly scalable computer optimized for lattice QCD using system-on-a-chip technology. The heart of a single node is the PowerPC-based QCDOC ASIC, developed in collaboration with IBM Research, with a peak speed of 1 GFlop/s. The nodes communicate via high-speed serial links in a 6-dimensional mesh with nearest-neighbor connections. We find that highly optimized four-dimensional QCD code obtains over 50% efficiency in cycle accurate simulations of QCDOC, even for problems of fixed computational difficulty run on tens of tho…
In this talk, I reported on recent work on the Aoki phase diagram for quenched QCD with two flavors of Wilson fermions. Part of this work was done in collaboration with Yigal Shamir, and a shorter account of this part appeared recently. In this write-up, I will therefore limit myself to reporting on work done with Steve Sharpe and Robert Singleton, Jr, which has not been published yet. We discuss the symmetries of quenched QCD, paying careful attention to non-perturbative issues. This allows us to derive an effective lagrangian which agrees with standard quenched chiral perturbation theory, bu…
The regime of small isospin chemical potential in QCD is investigated. Using the phase quenched partition function in the $ε$-regime an expression for the chiral condensate is given, which is studied in the temperature isospin chemical potential plane. Lines of constant values of the condensate are shown and it is estimated how the critical temperature varies as a function of the isospin chemical potential. Finally, the dependency of the fermion sign problem on the chemical potential and temperature is examined.
We present results of an ongoing study of two flavour QCD with Wilson fermions at finite temperature. We have used tree level Symanzik improvement in both the gauge and fermion part of the action. The phase diagram was previously determined on an $8^3 \times 4$ lattice and the existence of Aoki's phase demonstrated. On our current lattice of $12^2 \times 24 \times 4$ we have extended the set of observables and studied chiral and thermal properties at light quark masses.
We show how to perform a resummation, to all orders in perturbation theory, of a certain class of gauge invariant tadpole-like diagrams in Lattice QCD. These diagrams are often largely responsible for lattice artifacts. Our resummation leads to an improved perturbative expansion. Applied to a number of cases of interest, e.g. the lattice renormalization of some two-fermion operators, this expansion yields results remarkably close to corresponding nonperturbative estimates. We consider in our study both the Wilson and the clover action for fermions.
The physics of the QCD phase diagram is discussed in view from heavy-ion collisions, compact astrophysical phenomena, lattice QCD and chiral effective models. We find that (T,mu_B) region probed in heavy-ion collisions and the black hole formation processes covers most of the critical point locations predicted in recent lattice QCD Monte-Carlo simulations and chiral effective models of QCD. We also discuss the consistency of the statistical model results and dynamical model description.
The outline of the two lectures given in "Dense Matter School 2015" is presented. After an overview on the relevance of the phase diagram to heavy-ion collisions and compact star phenomena, I show some basic formulae to discuss the QCD phase diagram in the mean field treatment of the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model. Next, I introduce the strong-coupling lattice QCD, which is one of the promising methods to access the QCD phase diagram including the first order phase boundary. In the last part, I discuss the QCD phase diagram in asymmetric matter, which should be formed in compact star phenomena.
Nuclear forces and hyperon forces are studied by lattice QCD. Simulations are performed with (almost) physical quark masses, $m_π\simeq 146$ MeV and $m_K \simeq 525$ MeV, where $N_f=2+1$ nonperturbatively ${\cal O}(a)$-improved Wilson quark action with stout smearing and Iwasaki gauge action are employed on the lattice of $(96a)^4 \simeq (8.1\mbox{fm})^4$ with $a^{-1} \simeq 2.3$ GeV. In this report, we give the overview of the theoretical framework and present the numerical results for two-nucleon forces ($S=0$) and two-$Ξ$ forces ($S=-4$). Central forces are studied in $^1S_0$ channel, and c…
The phase diagram of lattice QCD in the strong coupling limit can be measured in the full $μ$-$T$ plane, also in the chiral limit. In particular, the phase diagram in the chiral limit features a tricritical point at some $(μ_c,T_c)$. This point may be related to the critical end point expected in the QCD phase diagram. We discuss the gauge corrections to the phase diagram at strong coupling and compare our findings with various possible scenarios in continuum QCD. We comment on the possibility that the tricritical point at strong coupling is connected to the tricritical point in the continuum,…
QCD, the theory of the strong interactions, involves quarks interacting with non-Abelian gluon fields. This theory has many features that are difficult to impossible to see in conventional diagrammatic perturbation theory. This includes quark confinement, mass generation, and chiral symmetry breaking. This paper is a colloquium level overview of the framework for understanding how these effects come about.
In this note we summarize the results from a longer article on obtaining the QCD phase diagram as a function of the temperature and chemical potential at large Nc and large Nf in the weak and the strong coupling limits. The weak coupling phase diagram is obtained from the Polyakov line order parameter, and the quark number, calculated using 1-loop perturbation theory for QCD formulated on S^1 x S^3. The strong coupling phase diagram is obtained from the same observables calculated at leading order in the lattice strong coupling and hopping parameter expansions. We show that the matrix models i…
I report on the current status of QCD phase diagram at vanishing baryon density. I focus on the QCD phase diagram with three degenerate quark flavor using Highly Improved Staggered Quarks on $N_τ=6$ lattices. No evidence of a first order phase transition in the pion mass window of $80\lesssim m_π \lesssim 230 $MeV is found. The pion mass at the critical point where the chiral first order phase transition ends is estimated to be $m^c_π \lesssim 45$ MeV.
A general discussion is presented of the possible symmetries responsible for confinement of color and of their evidence in lattice simulations. The consequences on the phase diagram of $QCD$ are also analyzed.
We show the universality of phase diagrams in QCD and QCD-like theories through the large-N_c equivalence. The whole phase diagrams are identical between QCD at finite isospin chemical potential and SO(2N_c) and Sp(2N_c) gauge theories at finite baryon chemical potential. In the chiral limit, they are also identical to that of QCD at finite chiral chemical potential. Outside the pion or diquark condensed phase in these theories, the universality of phase diagrams is applicable to QCD at finite baryon chemical potential. We further argue that the universality may work approximately even for N_c…
We summarize our recent results for the (T,mu)-phase diagram of N_f=3 QCD. Finding a strong variation of the critical endpoint mu_c with the quark mass m, we point out that an endpoint within reach of experiment requires fine-tuned quark masses. We further discuss the strategy and first data towards extending our results to the physical N_f=2+1 theory.
