119170993
Thermodynamics of (2+1)-flavor QCD: Confronting models with lattice studies
The Polyakov-quark-meson model, which combines chiral as well as deconfinement aspects of strongly interacting matter, is introduced for three light quark flavors. An analysis of the chiral and deconfinement phase transition of the model and its thermodynamics at finite temperatures is given. Three different forms of the effective Polyakov-loop potential are considered. The findings of the 2+1 flavor model investigations are compared to corresponding recent QCD lattice simulations of the RBC-Bielefeld, HotQCD and Wuppertal-Budapest collaborations. The influence of the heavier quark masses, which are used in the lattice calculations, is taken into account. In the transition region the bulk thermodynamics of the Polyakov-quark-meson model agrees well with the lattice data.
118742513
QCD Thermodynamics: Confronting the Polyakov-Quark-Meson Model with Lattice QCD
NJL-type effective models represent a low-energy realization of QCD and incorporate pertinent aspects such as chiral symmetry and its spontaneous breaking, the center symmetry in the heavy-quark limit as well as the axial anomaly. One such model, the Polyakov-quark-meson model for three light quark flavors, is introduced in order to study the phase structure of strongly-interacting matter. With recent high-statistics lattice QCD simulations of the finite-temperature equation of state, a detailed comparison with model results becomes accessible. Such comparisons allow to estimate volume and truncation effects of quantities, obtained on the lattice and provide possible lattice extrapolation procedures to finite chemical potential which are important to locate a critical endpoint in the QCD phase diagram.
119266212
QCD critical region and higher moments for three flavor models
One of the distinctive features of the QCD phase diagram is the possible emergence of a critical endpoint. The critical region around the critical point and the path dependency of the critical exponents are investigated within effective chiral (2 + 1)-flavor models with and without Polyakov loops. Results obtained in no-sea mean-field approximations where a divergent vacuum part in the fermion-loop contribution is neglected are compared to the renormalized ones. Furthermore, the modifications caused by the backreaction of the matter fluctuations on the pure Yang-Mills system are discussed. Higher-order, non-Gaussian moments of event-by-event distributions of various particle multiplicities are enhanced near the critical point and could serve as a probe to determine its location in the phase diagram. By means of a novel derivative technique higher-order generalized quark-number susceptibilities are calculated and their sign structure in the phase diagram is analyzed.
62901349
Charge Fluctuations as Thermometer for Heavy-Ion Collisions
We present a determination of freeze-out conditions in heavy-ion collisions based on ratios of cumulants of net electric charge fluctuations obtained from lattice QCD. These ratios can reliably be calculated for a wide range of chemical potential values by using a next-to-leading order Taylor series expansion around the limit of vanishing baryon, electric charge and strangeness chemical potentials. We first determine the strangeness and electric charge chemical potentials that characterize the conditions in heavy ion collisions at RHIC and LHC. We then show that a comparison of lattice QCD results for ratios of up to third order cumulants of electric charge fluctuations with experimental results allows us to extract the freeze-out baryon chemical potential and the freeze-out temperature. We apply our method to preliminary data of the STAR and PHENIX collaborations.
118580235
Higher-order ratios of baryon number cumulants
The relevance of higher order cumulants of net baryon number fluctuations for the analysis of freeze-out and critical conditions in heavy-ion collisions at LHC and RHIC is addressed. The sign structure of the higher order cumulants in the vicinity of the chiral crossover temperature might be a sensitive probe and may allow to elucidate their relation to the QCD phase transition. We calculate ratios of generalized quarknumber susceptibilities to high orders in three flavor QCD-like models and investigate their sign structure close to the chiral crossover line.
17501397
Low-momentum hyperon-nucleon interactions
We present a first exploratory study for hyperon-nucleon interactions using renormalization group techniques. The effective two-body low-momentum potential ${V}_{\text{low}\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}k}$ is obtained by integrating out the high-momentum components from realistic Nijmegen YN potentials. A T-matrix equivalence approach is employed, so that the low-energy phase shifts are reproduced by ${V}_{\text{low}\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}k}$ up to a momentum scale $\ensuremath{\Lambda}~500$ MeV. Although the various bare Nijmegen models differ somewhat from each other, the corresponding ${V}_{\text{low}\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}k}$ interactions show convergence in some channels, suggesting a possible model-independent YN interaction at low momenta.
3216251
Classes of confining gauge field configurations
We present a numerical method to compute path integrals in effective SU(2) Yang-Mills theories. The basic idea is to approximate the Yang-Mills path integral by summing over all gauge field configurations, which can be represented as a linear superposition of a small number of localized building blocks. With a suitable choice of building blocks many essential features of SU(2) Yang-Mills theory can be reproduced, particularly confinement. The analysis of our results leads to the conclusion that topological charge as well as extended structures are essential elements of confining gauge field configurations.
28835575
Forces between static-light mesons
The isospin, spin and parity dependent potential of a pair of static-light mesons is computed using Wilson twisted mass lattice QCD with two flavors of degenerate dynamical quarks. From the results a simple rule can be deduced stating, which isospin, spin and parity combinations correspond to attractive and which to repulsive forces.
6035695
The static-light meson spectrum from twisted mass lattice QCD
We compute the static-light meson spectrum with Nf = 2 flavours of sea quarks using Wilson twisted mass lattice QCD. We consider five different values for the light quark mass corresponding to 300MeV < mPS <600MeV and we present results for angular momentum j = 1/2, j = 3/2 and j = 5/2 and for parity P = + and P = −. We extrapolate our results to physical quark masses and make predictions regarding the spectrum of B and Bs mesons.
39889187
Kaon and D meson masses with N_f = 2+1+1 twisted mass lattice QCD
We discuss the computation of the kaon and D meson masses in the N_f = 2+1+1 twisted mass lattice QCD setup, where explicit heavy flavor and parity breaking occurs at finite lattice spacing. We present three methods suitable in this context and verify their consistency.
8900183
Computing K and D meson masses with Nf=2+1+1 twisted mass lattice QCD
We discuss the computation of the mass of the K and D mesons within the framework of N-f = 2 + 1 + 1 twisted mass lattice QCD from a technical point of view. These quantities are essential, already at the level of generating gauge configurations, being obvious candidates to tune the strange and charm quark masses to their physical values. In particular, we address the problems related to the twisted mass flavor and parity symmetry breaking, which arise when considering a non-degenerate (c, s) doublet. We propose and verify the consistency of three methods to extract the K and D meson masses in this framework. (c) 2010 Elsevier By. All rights reserved.