16876997
QCD thermodynamics with 2 and 3 quark flavors
We discuss the flavor dependence of the pressure and critical temperature calculated in QCD with 2, 2+1 and 3 flavors using improved gauge and staggered fermion actions on lattices with temporal extent Nt=4. For T > 2 Tc we find that bulk thermodynamics of QCD with 2 light and a heavier strange quark is well described by 3-flavor QCD while the transition temperature is closer to that of 2-flavor QCD. Furthermore, we present evidence that the chiral critical point of 3-flavor QCD, i.e. the second order endpoint of the line of first order chiral phase transitions, belongs to the universality class of the 3d Ising model.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
15351369
Charm production in deep inelastic scattering from threshold to high Q2
Charm final states in deep inelastic scattering constitute ~ 25% of the inclusive cross-section at small x as measured at HERA. These data can reveal important information on the charm and gluon structure of the nucleon if they are interpreted in a consistent perturbative QCD framework which is valid over the entire energy range from threshold to the high energy limit. We describe in detail how this can be carried out order-by-order in PQCD in the generalized MSbar formalism of Collins (generally known as the ACOT approach), and demonstrate the inherent smooth transition from the 3-flavor to the 4-flavor scheme in a complete order αs calculation, using a Monte Carlo implementation of this formalism. This calculation is accurate to the same order as the conventional NLO F2 calculation in the limit Q/mc >> 1. It includes the resummed large logarithm contributions of the 3-flavor scheme (generally known in this context as the fixed-flavor-number or FFN scheme) to all orders of αsln (mc2/Q2). For the inclusive structure function, comparison with recent HERA data and the existing FFN calculation reveals that the relatively simple order-αs (NLO) 4-flavor (mc≠0) calculation can, in practice, be extended to rather low energy scales, yielding good agreement with data over the full measured Q2 range. The Monte Carlo implementation also allows the calculation of differential distributions with relevant kinematic cuts. Comparisons with available HERA data show qualitative agreement; however, they also indicate the need to extend the calculation to the next order to obtain better description of the differential distributions.
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.
54036066
Attainment of a High-Quality Electron Beam for Fermilab's 4.3 MeV Cooler
The recent demonstration of electron cooling of antiprotons in the Recycler ring required a stable 4.3 MeV electron beam with a DC current of hundreds of mA and an angular spread in the cooling section of a fraction of a mrad. This paper describes the achieved parameters of the Fermilab cooler’s electron beam and details of operation.
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.
46056796
Fermilab electron cooling project: commissioning of the 5 MeV recirculation test set-up
An important part of the Fermilab's Recycler Electron Cooling (REC) project is a recirculation test which is performed using a 5-MV electrostatic accelerator, a Pelletron, with two tubes and a simplified beam line with one 180-degree bend. The main goal of the test is to demonstrate stable operation of a 4.4-MeV, 0.5-A DC electron beam. The paper describes the set-up and the early experimental results.