119415714
Thermodynamics of (2+1)-flavor QCD
We report on the status of our QCD thermodynamics project. It is performed on the QCDOC machine at Brookhaven National Laboratory and the APEnext machine at Bielefeld University. Using a 2+1 flavor formulation of QCD at almost realistic quark masses we calculated several thermodynamical quantities. In this proceeding we show the susceptibilites of the chiral condensate and the Polyakov loop, the static quark potential and the spatial string tension.
16120128
Bulk thermodynamics and charge fluctuations at non-vanishing baryon density
We present results on bulk thermodynamic quantities as well as net baryon number, strangeness and electric charge fluctuations in QCD at non-zero density and temperature obtained from lattice calculations with almost physical quark masses for two values of the lattice cut-off aT = 1/4 and 1/6. We show that with our improved p4fa3-action the cut-off effects are under control when using lattices with a temporal extent of 6 or larger and that the contribution to the equation of state, which is due to a finite chemical potential is small for {mu}{sub q}/T < 1. Moreover, at vanishing chemical potential, i.e. under conditions almost realized at RHIC and the LHC, quartic fluctuations of net baryon number and strangeness are large in a narrow temperature interval characterizing the transition region from the low to high temperature phase. At non-zero baryon number density, strangeness fluctuations are enhanced and correlated to fluctuations of the net baryon number. If strangeness is furthermore forced to vanish, as it may be the case in systems created in heavy ion collisions, strangeness fluctuations are significantly smaller than baryon number fluctuations.
67814332
An efficient method to compute the residual phase on a Lefschetz thimble
We propose an efficient method to compute the so-called residual phase that appears when performing Monte Carlo calculations on a Lefschetz thimble. The method is stochastic and its cost scales linearly with the physical volume, linearly with the number of stochastic estimators and quadratically with the length of the extra dimension along the gradient flow. This is a drastic improvement over previous estimates of the cost of computing the residual phase. We also report on basic tests of correctness and scaling of the code.
119188644
QCD bulk thermodynamics and conserved charge fluctuations with HISQ fermions
After briefly reviewing recent progress by the HotQCD collaboration in studying the 2+1 flavor QCD equation of state, we will focus on results on fluctuations of conserved charges by the BNL-Bielefeld and HotQCD collaborations. Higher order cumulants of the net-charge distributions are increasingly dominated by a universal scaling behavior, which arises due to a critical point of QCD in the chiral limit. Considering cumulants up to the 6^{th} order, we observe that they generically behave as expected from universal scaling laws, which is quite different from cumulants calculated within the hadron resonance gas model. Taking ratios of these cumulants, we obtain volume independent results that can be compared to the experimental measurements. We will argue that the freeze-out chemical potentials and the freeze-out temperature, usually obtained by a HRG model fit to the measured hadronic yields, can also be obtained in a model independent way from ab-initio lattice QCD calculations by utilizing observables related to conserved charge fluctuations. Further, we will show that the freeze-out strangeness and electric charge chemical potentials can be fixed by imposing strangeness neutrality and isospin asymmetry constraints in the lattice QCD calculations, in order to accommodate conditions met in heavy ion collisions. All results have been obtained with the highly improved staggered quark action (HISQ) and almost physical quark masses on lattices with temporal extent of N_\tau=6,8,10,12. 
After briefly reviewing recent progress by the HotQCD collaboration in studying the 2+1 flavor QCD equation of state, we will focus on results on fluctuations of conserved charges by the BNL-Bielefeld and HotQCD collaborations. Higher order cumulants of the net-charge distributions are increasingly dominated by a universal scaling behavior, which arises due to a critical point of QCD in the chiral limit. Considering cumulants up to the 6(th) order, we observe that they generically behave as expected from universal scaling laws, which is quite different from cumulants calculated within the hadron resonance gas model. Taking ratios of these cumulants, we obtain volume independent results that can be compared to the experimental measurements. We will argue that the freeze-out chemical potentials and the freeze-out temperature, usually obtained by a HRG model fit to the measured hadronic yields, can also be obtained in a model independent way from ab-initio lattice QCD calculations by utilizing observables related to conserved charge fluctuations. Further, we will show that the freeze-out strangeness and electric charge chemical potentials can be fixed by imposing strangeness neutrality and isospin asymmetry constraints in the lattice QCD calculations, in order to accommodate conditions met in heavy ion collisions. All results have been obtained with the highly improved staggered quark action (HISQ) and almost physical quark masses on lattices with temporal extent of N(τ) = 6, 8, 10, 12.
15858058
Non-zero density QCD by the Taylor expansion method: The isentropic equation of state, hadronic fluctuations and more
We discuss the Taylor expansion approach to non-zero baryon chemical potential ($\mu_B$) and present results on expanion coefficients of the pressure and energy density up to the 6-th order in $\mu_B$. Calculations have been performed with (2+1)-flavor of improved staggerd fermions (p4fat3) and almost physical masses on lattices with temporal extent of four and six time slices. We use the expansion coefficients to construct the isentropic equation of state on lines of constant entropy per baryon number and various different hadronic fluctuations. Furthermore, we estimate the radius of convegence of our expansion, which can be seen as a method to analyze the structure of the QCD phase diagram.
117478307
Chiral restoration and deconfinement in two-color QCD with two flavors of staggered quarks
In preparation of lattice studies of the two-color QCD phase diagram we studychiral restoration and deconfinement at finite temperature with two flavors ofstaggered quarks using an RHMC algorithm on GPUs. We first study unquenchingeffects in local Polyakov loop distributions, and the Polyakov loop potentialobtained via Legendre transformation, in a fixed-scale approach for heavierquarks. We also present the chiral condensate and the correspondingsusceptibility over the lattice coupling across the chiral transition forlighter quarks. Using Ferrenberg-Swendsen reweighting we extract the maxima ofthe chiral susceptibility in order to determine pseudo-critical couplings onvarious lattices suitable for chiral extrapolations. These are then used to fixthe relation between coupling and temperature in the chiral limit.
723137
Status of the Fermilab electron cooling project
The first stage of the Fermilab Electron Cooling R&D program is now complete: technology necessary to generate hundreds of milliamps of electron beam current at MeV energies has been demonstrated. Conceptual design studies show that with an electron beam current of 200 mA and with a cooling section of 20 m electron cooling in the Fermilab Recycler ring can provide antiproton stacking rates suitable for the Tevatron upgrades beyond Run II luminosity goals. A prototype of such an electron cooling system is now being built at Fermilab as part of the continuing R&D program. This paper describes the electron cooling system design as well as the status of the Fermilab electron cooling R&D program.
118674965
Operation and improvements of the Fermilab 400 MeV Linac
The 400 MeV Fermilab Linac Upgrade commissioning began August 28, 1993. High energy physics collider operation (run 1b) began in November 1993 and ended March 1, 1996. The Linac, operating at 98% reliability, provided 400 MeV H{sup -} beam to the Booster and 66 MeV H{sup -} beam to the Neutron Therapy Facility. During this time, the beam intensity, which initially was administratively set to 35 MA, rose to a peak of 50 mA while losses decreased significantly. This paper discusses the Linac operation and reliability since the Upgrade.
119331939
Chiral perturbation theory for lattice QCD with a twisted mass term
Quantum chromodynamics on a lattice with Wilson fermions and a chirally twisted mass term for two degenerate quark flavours is considered in the framework of chiral perturbation theory. The pion mass and decay constant are calculated in next-to-leading order including terms linear in the lattice spacing a.
119495100
QCD phenomenology of charm production at HERA
We compare different schemes for the treatment of heavy quark production in Deep-Inelastic Scattering (DIS). For fully-integrated quantities such as F{sub 2}(x,Q{sup 2}), we advocate the use of the General-Massive Variable-Flavor-Number (GM-VFN) scheme; we present some results showing the progress of a Next-to-Leading Order calculation in this scheme. For differential quantities, the Fixed-Flavor-Number (FFN) scheme provides a more appropriate starting point. We present a new calculation of the azimuthal distribution of charm quark production in DIS. All results have been obtained using a Monte Carlo program under development.
8018207
Top Quark Physics at the NLC
A high energy $e^+e^-$ linear collider (NLC) is an excellent tool for studying the properties of the top quark. In this talk I review some of the theory of top quark production and decay in $e^+e^-$ collisions both at threshold and in the continuum. I also report on the results of phenomenological analyses of $t\bar t$ production at the NLC.