2021/12/16 by Reinhold Kaiser, Owe Philipsen, Kaiser, Reinhold +3
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Lattice (hep-lat) #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions #Scientific Research and Discoveries
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2112.08755
openalex publication_date 2021/12/16 · openalex created_date 2022/05/05 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Quenched QCD at zero baryonic chemical potential undergoes a first-order deconfinement phase transition at a critical temperature Tc, which is related to the spontaneous breaking of the global center symmetry. Including heavy, dynamical quarks breaks the center symmetry explicitly and weakens the first-order phase transition. For decreasing quark masses the first-order phase transition turns into a smooth crossover at a Z2-critical point. The critical quark mass corresponding to this point has been examined with Nf = 2 Wilson fermions for several Nτ in a recent study within our group. For comparison, we also locate the critical point with Nf = 2 staggered fermions on Nτ= 8 lattices. For this purpose we perform Monte Carlo simulations for several quark mass values and various aspect ratios in order to extrapolate to the thermodynamic limit. The critical mass is obtained by fitting to a finite size scaling formula of the kurtosis of the Polyakov loop. Our results indicate large discretization effects, requiring simulations on lattices with Nτ> 8.