Meson screening masses from lattice QCD with two light quarks and one strange quark

We present results for screening masses of mesons built from light and strange quarks in the temperature range of approximately between 140 MeV to 800 MeV. The lattice computations were performed with 2+1 dynamical light and strange flavors of improved (p4) staggered fermions along a line of constant physics defined by a pion mass of about 220 MeV and a kaon mass of 500 MeV. The lattices had temporal extents N _τ =4, 6 and 8 and aspect ratios of N _s /N _τ ≥4. At least up to a temperature of 140 MeV the pseudo-scalar screening mass remains almost equal to the corresponding zero temperature pseudo-scalar (pole) mass. At temperatures around 3T _c (T _c being the transition temperature) the continuum extrapolated pseudo-scalar screening mass approaches very close to the free continuum result of 2πT from below. On the other hand, at high temperatures the vector screening mass turns out to be larger than the free continuum value of 2πT. The pseudo-scalar and the vector screening masses do not become degenerate even for a temperature as high as 4T _c . Using these mesonic spatial correlation functions we have also investigated the restoration of chiral symmetry and the effective restoration of the axial symmetry. We have found that the vector and the axial-vector screening correlators become degenerate, indicating chiral symmetry restoration, at a temperature which is consistent with the QCD transition temperature obtained in previous studies. On the other hand, the pseudo-scalar and the scalar screening correlators become degenerate only at temperatures larger than 1.3T _c , indicating that the effective restoration of the axial symmetry takes place at a temperature larger than the QCD transition temperature.     

A lattice Dirac operator for QCD with light dynamical quarks

In QCD chiral symmetry is explicitly broken by quark masses, the effect of which can be described reliably by chiral perturbation theory. Effects of explicit chiral symmetry breaking by the lattice regularisation of the Dirac operator, typically parametrised by the residual mass, should be negligible for almost all observables if the residual mass of the Dirac operator is much smaller than the quark mass. However, maintaining a small residual mass becomes increasingly expensive as the quark mass decreases towards the physical value and the continuum limit is approached. We investigate the feasibility of using a new approximately chiral Dirac operator with a small residual mass as an alternative to overlap and domain wall fermions for lattice simulations. Our Dirac operator is constructed from a Zolotarev rational approximation for the matrix sign function that is optimal for bulk modes of the hermitian kernel Dirac operator but not for the low-lying parts of its spectrum. We test our operator on various ³²³×64${32}^3\times 64$ lattices, comparing the residual mass and the performance of the Hybrid Monte Carlo algorithm at a similar lattice spacing and pion mass with a hyperbolic tangent operator as used by domain wall fermions. We find that our approximations have a significantly smaller residual mass than domain wall fermions at a similar computational cost, and still admit topological charge change.     

Incorporating dynamical light quarks in lattice QCD at finite temperature

Using the pseudo-fermion Monte Carlo method we investigate the chiral and the deconfinement phase transitions in the SU(3) gauge theory with dynamical staggered fermions on a 6³ × 2 lattice. The energy density of the gluonic sector ε_G, the average thermal Wilson loop |L| and the order parameter are found to have a rapid variation in the same range of β (=6/g²). The variation is similar to that observed in the quenched theory but is at a smaller value of β.     

The thermodynamics of SU(3) lattice gauge theory with a light isodoublet of quarks

Using hybrid differential equations with stochastic pseudo-fermion fields, we simulated SU(3) lattice gauge theory with a light isodoublet of quarks on a 4 × 8³ lattice. The bare quark mass is 0.0125 in lattice units which corresponds to 7.75 MeV if the finite temperature chiral transition occurs at T_c=155 MeV as suggested by phenomenology. The transition is first order and metastable states are found over a narrow range in temperature. Results for 4⁴ lattices are also presented for 2 and 3 light flavors.     

Chiral phase transition in lattice QCD with Wilson quarks

The nature of the chiral phase transition in lattice QCD is studied for the cases of 2, 3 and 6 flavors with degenerate Wilson quarks, mainly on a lattice with the temporal direction extensionN _t=4. We find that the chiral phase transition is continuous for the case of 2 flavors, while it is of first order for 3 and 6 flavors.     

Chiral phase transition in lattice QCD with Wilson quarks

The nature of the chiral phase transition in lattice QCD is studied for the cases of 2, 3 and 6 flavors with degenerate Wilson quarks, mainly on a lattice with the temporal direction extensionN _t=4. We find that the chiral phase transition is continuous for the case of 2 flavors, while it is of first order for 3 and 6 flavors.     

Chiral phase transition in lattice QCD with dynamical quarks

The effect of virtual light quark loops on the chiral phase transition in lattice QCD with staggered fermions is investigated by employing the pseudo-fermion Monte Carlo method on a 6³ × 2 lattice. The variation in the order parameter $\text{〈}\text{ψ}\text{ψ〉}$ is found to become less sharp than the quenched case, indicating a second order chiral phase transitioon in the full theory.     

Spontaneous generation of Nambu-Jona-Lasinio interaction in QCD involving two light quarks

Within QCD involving two light quarks, the possibility of a spontaneous generation of effective interaction leading to Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model is studied by using the Bogolyubov quasiaverage approach. The compensation equation for the form factor of this interaction is shown to have a nontrivial solution that leads to a theory involving two parameters: the average value of the low-energy constant α _s and a dimensional parameter f _π. All of the remaining parameters, including the current and constituent quark masses, the quark condensate, the pion mass, and the sigma-meson mass and width, are expressed in terms of the input parameters in satisfactory agreement with experimental phenomenology. The results obtained here give sufficient grounds to conclude that the proposed approach is applicable in low-energy hadron physics and that it can be used in dealing with other problems.     

Spontaneous chiral-symmetry breaking of lattice QCD with massless dynamical quarks

One of the most challenging issues in QCD is the investigation of spontaneous chiral-symmetry breaking, which is characterized by the non-vanishing chiral condensate when the bare fermion mass is zero. In standard methods of the lattice gauge theory, one has to perform expensive simulations at multiple bare quark masses, and employ some modeled functions to extrapolate the data to the chiral limit. This paper applies the probability distribution function method to computing the chiral condensate in lattice QCD with massless dynamical quarks, without any ambiguous mass extrapolation. The results for staggered quarks indicate that this might be a promising and efficient method for investigating the spontaneous chiral-symmetry breaking in lattice QCD, which deserves further investigation.     

Up quark mass in lattice QCD with three light dynamical quarks and implications for strong CP invariance

A standing mystery in the standard model is the unnatural smallness of the strong CP violating phase. A massless up quark has long been proposed as one potential solution. A lattice calculation of the constants of the chiral Lagrangian essential for the determination of the up quark mass, 2alpha(8)-alpha(5), is presented. We find 2alpha(8)-alpha(5)=0.29+/-0.18, which corresponds to m(u)/m(d)=0.410+/-0.036. This is the first such calculation using a physical number of dynamical light quarks, N(f)=3.     

The phase structure of lattice QCD with two flavors of Wilson quarks and renormalization group improved gluons

The effect of changing the lattice action for the gluon field on the recently observed [F. Farchioni, R. Frezzotti, K. Jansen, I. Montvay, G.C. Rossi, E. Scholz, A. Shindler, N. Ukita, C. Urbach, I. Wetzorke, Eur. Phys. J. C 39, 421 (2005); hep-lat/0406039] first order phase transition near zero quark mass is investigated by replacing the Wilson plaquette action by the DBW2 action. The lattice action for quarks is unchanged: it is in both cases the original Wilson action. It turns out that Wilson fermions with the DBW2 gauge action have a phase structure where the minimal pion mass and the jump of the average plaquette are decreased, when compared to Wilson fermions with Wilson plaquette action at similar values of the lattice spacing. Taking the DBW2 gauge action is advantageous also from the point of view of the computational costs of numerical simulations.Received: 29 October 2004, Revised: 7 March 2005, Published online: 31 May 2005     

The calculation of the hadron spectrum in lattice QCD with dynamical quarks

Hadron masses are calculated on an 8³×16 lattice using four flavors of staggered fermions to generate the gauge configurations, but using Wilson fermions to calculate the hadron propagators. The identification of a value of the Wilson hopping parameter with the value of the bare quark mass used in the simulations is discussed.