Application of the heat-kernel method to the constituent quark model at finite temperature

The heat-kernel method is applied to the constituent quark model. We calculate the effect of thermal quark fluctuations on the meson action and the resulting quark condensate and ππ-scattering amplitude at finite temperature. The quarks produce a chiral phase transition only by their effect on the mesonic coupling constants. The s-wave isospin zero ππ-scattering amplitude diverges near the phase transition showing the necessity for a more sophisticated treatment of meson fluctuations.     

Phase transition and the nucleon as a soliton in the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model at finite temperature and density

We study some bulk thermodynamical characteristics, meson properties and the nucleon as a baryon-number-one soliton in hot quark matter in the NJL model as well as in hot nucleon matter in a hybrid NJL model in which the Dirac sea of quarks is combined with a Fermi sea of nucleons. In both cases, working in the mean-field approximation, we find a chiral phase transition from the Goldstone to the Wigner phase. At finite density the chiral order parameter and the constituent quark mass have a non-monotonic temperature dependence — at finite temperatures not close to the critical one they are less affected than in cold matter. Whereas quark matter is rather soft against thermal fluctuations and the corresponding chiral phase transition is smooth, nucleon matter is much stiffer and the chiral phase transition is very sharp. The thermodynamical variables show large discontinuities which is an indication for a first-order phase transition. We solve the B = 1 solitonic sector of the NJL model in the presence of external hot quark and nucleon media. In the hot medium at intermediate temperature the soliton is more bound and less swelled than in the case of cold matter. At some critical temperature, which for nucleon matter coincides with the critical temperature for the chiral phase transition, we find no more a localized solution. According to this model scenario one should expect a sharp phase transition from nucleon to quark matter.     

Chiral symmetry breaking and pion properties at finite temperatures

Spontaneous and explicit chiral symmetry breaking is analyzed in Coulomb gauge QCD at finite temperatures, using an instantaneous approximation for the quark interaction and incorporating confinement through a running coupling constant. The thermodynamics of the quarks is treated approximatively by assuming that the momentum-dependent constituent quark mass sets the scale for thermodynamic fluctuations of colour singlet excitations. We investigate the class of a temperature independent and a temperature dependent interaction between quarks. In the chiral limit both temperature independent and a smooth temperature dependent interaction yields a second order chiral phase transition with critical exponents close to the values for a BCS super-conductor. For explicit chiral symmetry breaking we find a nearly constant pion mass below the transition temperature, but a strongly overdamped mode above. For a first order deconfining transition in the gluonic sector also the quark sector shows a first order chiral phase transition. The relevance of our results for relativistic heavy ion collisions is briefly discussed.     

Possible pseudogap phase in QCD

Thermal pion fluctuations, in principle, can completely disorder the phase of quark condensate and thus restore chiral symmetry. If this happens before the quark condensate melts, strongly interacting matter will be in the pseudogap state just above the chiral phase transition. The quark condensate does not vanish locally, and quarks acquire constituent masses in the pseudogap phase, despite the fact that chiral symmetry is restored.     

Nuclear Matter in a Chiral SU(3) Quark Mean-Field Model

A quark meson coupling model based on SU(3)_L×SU(3)_R symmetry and scale invariance is proposed. The quarks and mesons get masses through symmetry broken. We apply this SU(3) chiral constituent quark model to investigating the nuclear matter at finite temperature and density. The effective baryon masses, compression modulus and hyperon potentials are all reasonable. The critical temperature of liquid-gas phase transition is also calculated in this model.     

Chiral Phase Transition at Finite Isospin Density in Linear Sigma Model

Using the linear sigma model, we have introduced the pion isospin chemical potential. The chiral phase transition is studied at finite temperatures and finite isospin densities. We have studied the μ-T phase diagram for the chiral phase transition and found the transition cannot happen below a certain low temperature because of the Bose-Einstein condensation in this system. Above that temperature, the chiral phase transition is studied by the isotherms of pressure versus density. We indicate that the transition, in the chiral limit, is a first-order transition from a low-density phase to a high-density phase like a gas-liquid phase transition.     

Equilibration and relaxation times at the chiral phase transition including reheating

We investigate the relaxational dynamics of the order parameter of chiral symmetry breaking, the sigma mean-field, with a heat bath consisting of quarks and antiquarks. A semiclassical stochastic Langevin equation of motion is obtained from the linear sigma model with constituent quarks. The equilibration of the system is studied for a first order phase transition and a critical point, where a different behavior is found. At the first order phase transition we observe the phase coexistence and at a critical point the phenomenon of critical slowing down with large relaxation times. We go beyond existing Langevin studies and include reheating of the heat bath by determining the energy dissipation during the relaxational process. The energy of the entire system is conserved. In a critical point scenario we again observe critical slowing down.     

基于手性声子晶体的谷拓扑声输运

研究手性风车形散射体构建的谷拓扑声波导。具有右手与左手手性风车形散射体的声子晶体具有截然不同的声谷拓扑特性。当两种手性风车形散射体从-60°旋转到60°时,其所构建的声子晶体均出现2次偶然简并的狄拉克点与谷霍尔相变。基于两种具有相反谷霍尔相的手性声子晶体构建的谷拓扑声波导,在其重叠体带隙内存在一对局域在波导分界面处的谷态边缘态。实验研究表明,该边缘态可以很好的支持谷拓扑声输运,且对弯曲与无序两种缺陷具有一定的鲁棒性.      

The equation of state of quarks and mesons in a renormalization group flow picture

Non-perturbative flow equations within an effective linear sigma model coupled to constituent quarks for two quark flavours are derived and solved. A heat kernel regularization is employed for a renormalization group improved effective potential. We determine the initial values of the coupling constants in the effective potential at zero temperature. Solving the evolution equations with the same initial values at finite temperature in the chiral limit, we find a second-order phase transition at T_c≈150 MeV. Due to the smooth decoupling of massive modes, we can directly link the low-temperature four-dimensional theory to the three-dimensional high-temperature theory. We calculate the equation of state in the chiral limit and for finite pion masses and determine universal critical exponents.     

Critical properties of XY model on two-layer Villain－ferromagnetic lattice

We investigate phase transitions of the XY model on a two-layer square lattice which consists of a Villain plane (J) and a ferromagnetic plane (I), using Monte Carlo simulations and a histogram method. Depending on the values of interaction parameters (I,J), the system presents three phases: namely, a Kosterlitz－Thouless (KT) phase in which the two planes are critical for I predominant over J, a chiral phase in which the two planes have a chiral order for J predominant over I and a new phase in which only the Villain plane has a chiral order and the ferromagnetic plane is paramagnetic with a small value of chirality. We clarify the nature of phase transitions by using a finite size scaling method. We find three different kinds of transitions according to the values of (I,J): the KT transition, the Ising transition and an XY-Ising transition with ν=0.849(3). It turns out that the Ising or XY-Ising transition is associated with the disappearance of the chiral order in the Villain plane.     

外尔半金属及其输运特性

外尔半金属是继石墨烯以及拓扑绝缘体之后的又一个研究热点。相比于后两者,外尔半金 属独特的三维无能隙线性色散能带结构使得它有很多奇特的性质,如：手性反常、手性磁效应、 反弱局域化、手性朗道能级和负磁阻效应等。实际样品中无序总是不可避免的,所以考虑无序对 体系的影响是很有必要的。我们回顾了无序下第一类以及第二类外尔半金属的相变特性,并获得 了完整的相图,这些无序诱导的相变丰富了拓扑安德森绝缘体和安德森金属绝缘体相变的物理内 涵。我们同样回顾了长程短程无序影响下的第一类外尔半金属体系的输运,发现了一种不能采用 玻尔兹曼输运方程来描述的输运过程。我们介绍Imbert-Fedorov 位移这一光学中的效应在外尔 半金属中的实现,这为更好地应用外尔半金属提供了更多的可能性,随后采用波包散射,我们解 释了外尔半金属中的超高载流子迁移率问题的原因,最后我们给出一个简要的总结。     

利用格点量子色动力学研究手征平滑过渡温度和手征相变温度

回顾了最近关于手征平滑过渡温度和手征相变温度的研究结果。首先给出了在零重子化学势能下的手征平滑过渡温度为156.5(1.5) MeV，其次，给出了在非零重子化学势能下手征相转变曲线的二阶及四阶曲率分别为0.012(4)和0.000(4)。接着讨论了在格点QCD中第一次得到的量子色动力学的手征相变温度。在热力学极限、连续极限及手征极限下，我们得到手征相变温度为132$^{+3}_{-6}$ MeV。     

Transport coefficients of a massive pion gas

We review our main results concerning the transport coefficients of a light meson gas,in particular we focus on the case of a massive pion gas.Leading order results according to the chiral power-counting are presented for the DC electrical conductivity,thermal conductivity,shear viscosity,and bulk viscosity.We also comment on the possible correlation between the bulk viscosity and the trace anomaly in QCD,as well as the relation between unitarity and a minimum of the quotient η/s near the phase transition.     

Virtual Compton scattering at low energies with a positron beam

The European Physical Journal A - Using a transport model that includes a first-order chiral phase transition between the partonic and the hadronic matter, we study the development of density...     

Off-equilibrium photon production during the chiral phase transition

In the early stage of ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions chiral symmetry is restored temporarily. During this so-called chiral phase transition, the quark masses change from their constituent to their bare values. This mass shift leads to the spontaneous non-perturbative creation of quark–antiquark pairs, which effectively contributes to the formation of the quark–gluon plasma. We investigate the photon production induced by this creation process. We provide an approach that eliminates possible unphysical contributions from the vacuum polarization and renders the resulting photon spectra integrable in the ultraviolet domain. The off-equilibrium photon numbers are of quadratic order in the perturbative coupling constants while a thermal production is only of quartic order. Quantitatively, we find, however, that for the most physical mass-shift scenarios and for photon momenta larger than 1 GeV the off-equilibrium processes contribute less photons than the thermal processes.     

Phase structure of two-flavor QCD at finite chemical potential

We study the phase diagram of two-flavor QCD at imaginary chemical potentials in the chiral limit. To this end we compute order parameters for chiral symmetry breaking and quark confinement. The interrelation of quark confinement and chiral symmetry breaking is analyzed with a new order parameter for the confinement phase transition. We show that it is directly related to both the quark density as well as the Polyakov loop expectation value. Our analytical and numerical results suggest a close relation between the chiral and the confinement phase transition.     

Effects of the anomaly on the two-flavor QCD chiral phase transition

We use strongly coupled lattice QED with two flavors of massless staggered fermions to model the chiral phase transition in two-flavor massless QCD. Our model allows us to vary the QCD anomaly and thus study its effects on the transition. Our study confirms the widely accepted viewpoint that the chiral phase transition is first order in the absence of the anomaly. Turning on the anomaly weakens the transition and turns it second order at a critical anomaly strength. The anomaly strength at the tricritical point is characterized using r=(M(eta')-M(pi))/rho(eta'), where M(eta'), M(pi) are the screening masses of the anomalous and regular pions and rho(eta') is the mass scale that governs the low energy fluctuations of the anomalous symmetry. We estimate that r ~ 7 in our model. This suggests that a strong anomaly at the two-flavor QCD chiral phase transition is necessary to wash out the first order transition.     

Chiral susceptibility and chiral phase transition in Nambu–Jona-Lasinio model

We give a general relation between the chiral susceptibility and the thermodynamical potential and a relation between the chiral susceptibility and the condition for furcations to appear in the Wigner solution(s) in the Nambu–Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model. We find that the chiral susceptibility is a quantity able to represent the appearance of furcation in the solution(s) of the gap equation and the concavo–convexity of the thermodynamical potential in the NJL model. It indicates that the chiral susceptibility can identify the stability of the states and the chiral phase transition in NJL model. We propose that analyzing the chiral susceptibility may play an important role in studying the chiral phase transition in approaches superior to the NJL model.     

Dynamics and stability of chiral fluid

Starting from the linear sigma model with constituent quarks we derive hydrodynamic equations which are coupled to the order-parameter field, e.g. the chiral fluid dynamics. For a static system in thermal equilibrium this model leads to a chiral phase transition which, depending on the choice of the quark-meson coupling constant g, could be a crossover or a first order one. We investigate the stability of the chiral fluid in the static and expanding background by considering the evolution of perturbations with respect to the mean-field solution. In the static background the spectrum of plane-wave perturbations consists of two branches, one corresponding to the sound waves and another to the σ-meson excitations. For large g these two branches cross and the excitation spectrum acquires exponentially growing modes. The stability analysis is also done for the Bjorken-like background solution by explicitly solving the time-dependent differential equation for perturbations in the η space. In this case the growth rate of unstable modes is significantly reduced.     

A phenomenological theory of the isotropic to chiral smectic-C phase transition

In this paper we discuss the direct isotropic to chiral smectic-C phase transition on the basis of a phenomenological theory. The model free energy is written in terms of the coupled order parameters including the spontaneous polarization. We present a detailed analysis of the different phases that can occur and analyze the question under which conditions a direct isotropic to chiral smectic-C phase transition is possible when compared to other phase transitions. On the basis of this model the isotropic-smectic-C^* transition is always of first order. The theoretical predictions are compared with the available experimental results.-1