Phase structure of finite temperature QCD in the heavy quark region

2011/06/30 by H. Saito, S. Ejiri, Shinji Ejiri +8 · 72 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Bottom quark #Condensed matter physics #Distribution function #Down quark #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Particle physics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Phase transition #Physics #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions #Quantum chromodynamics #Quark #Thermodynamics #Top quark #hep-lat #hep-ph

paper · pdf · open access · doi:10.1103/physrevd.84.054502

published in Physical review. D. Particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology/Physical review. D. Particles and fields 84(5), 054502 (American Physical Society) · 13 pages, 17 figures, 3 tables

openalex publication_date 2011/09/08 · arxiv created 2012/02/29 · arxiv updated 2015/05/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

We study the quark mass dependence of the finite temperature QCD phase transition in the heavy quark region using an effective potential defined through the probability distribution function of the average plaquette. Performing a simulation of SU(3) pure gauge theory, we first confirm that the distribution function has two peaks indicating that the phase transition is of first order in the heavy quark limit, while the first-order transition turns into a crossover as the quark mass decreases from infinity, where the mass dependence of the distribution function is evaluated by the reweighting method combined with the hopping parameter expansion. We determine the endpoint of the first-order transition region for N_f=1, 2, 3 and 2+1 cases. The quark mass dependence of the latent heat is also evaluated in the first-order transition region.

Cited by

• Exploring the nature of chiral phase transition in two-flavor QCD using extra heavy quarks
• Strong-Interaction Matter under Extreme Conditions from Chiral Quark Models with Nonlocal Separable Interactions
• Scope and convergence of the hopping parameter expansion in finite temperature QCD with heavy quarks around the critical point
• Deconfinement critical point of lattice QCD with Nf=2 Wilson fermions

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