2003/11/30 by Adrian Dumitru, Dirk Röder, Jörg Ruppert · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions #hep-lat #hep-ph #nucl-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.70.074001
published as Phys.Rev. D70 (2004) 074001 · 9 pages, 3 figures; v2: renormalization of vacuum fluctuations in the linear sigma model and some references added; final version to appear in PRD
arxiv created 2004/09/17 · openalex publication_date 2004/10/11 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We analyze the dependence of the QCD transition temperature on the quark (or pion) mass. We find that a linear sigma model, which links the transition to chiral symmetry restoration, predicts a much stronger dependence of Tc on m_\ensuremathπ than seen in present lattice data for m_\ensuremathπ\ensuremath\gtrsim0.4 GeV. On the other hand, working down from m_\ensuremathπ=\ensuremath∞, an effective Lagrangian for the Polyakov loop requires only small explicit symmetry breaking, b1\ensuremath∼exp(\ensuremath-m_\ensuremathπ), to describe Tc(m_\ensuremathπ) in the above mass range. Physically, this is a consequence of the flat potential (large correlation length) for the Polyakov loop in the three-color pure gauge theory at Tc. We quantitatively estimate the end point of the line of first-order deconfining phase transitions: m_\ensuremathπ\ensuremath≃4.2√\ensuremathσ\ensuremath≃1.8 GeV and Tc\ensuremath≃240 MeV for three flavors and three colors.