Lowering Critical Temperature in the Extended Quark Sigma Model at Finite Temperature

A phase transition, a critical temperature, and meson masses are studied in the extended quark sigma model, in which the effective mesonic potential is extended to include eighth-order mesonic interactions. The second derivative of the effective mesonic potential is applied to calculate the effective sigma and pion masses as functions of temperature. We find that the critical temperature assumes a lower value in comparison with that of original quark sigma model. A comparison with recent calculations of lattice QCD is introduced. The behavior of the phase transition remains unchanged when the higher-order mesonic interactions are included. We find that the spontaneous symmetry-breaking condition is necessary to satisfy the Goldstone theorem at low temperatures.