arXiv subjects

Andrei Alexandru

Publications and source records attributed to Andrei Alexandru.

At least 91 records · Page 5Linked to original sources

arXiv2015

A Monte Carlo algorithm for simulating fermions on Lefschetz thimbles

A possible solution of the notorious sign problem preventing direct Monte Carlo calculations for systems with non-zero chemical potential is to deform the integration region in the complex plane to a Lefschetz thimble. We investigate this approach for a simple fermionic model. We introduce an easy to implement Monte Carlo algorithm to sample the dominant thimble. Our algorithm relies only on the integration of the gradient flow in the numerically stable direction, which gives it a distinct advantage over the other proposed algorithms. We demonstrate the stability and efficiency of the algorithm by applying it to an exactly solvable fermionic model and compare our results with the analytical ones. We report a very good agreement for a certain region in the parameter space where the dominant contribution comes from a single thimble, including a region where standard methods suffer from a severe sign problem. However, we find that there are also regions in the parameter space where the contribution from multiple thimbles is important, even in the continuum limit.

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arXiv2015

Phases of SU(3) Gauge Theories with Fundamental Quarks via Dirac Spectral Density

We propose that, in SU(3) gauge theories with fundamental quarks, confinement can be inferred from spectral density of the Dirac operator. This stems from the proposition that its possible behaviors are exhausted by three distinct types (Fig.1). The monotonic cases are standard and entail confinement with valence chiral symmetry breaking (A) or the lack of both (C,C'). The bimodal (anomalous) option (B) was frequently regarded as an artifact (lattice or other) in previous studies, but we show for the first time that it persists in the continuum limit, and conclude that it informs of a non-confining phase with broken valence chiral symmetry. This generalization rests on the following. $(α)$ We show that bimodality in $N_f$=0 theory past deconfinement temperature $T_c$ is stable with respect to removal of both infrared and ultraviolet cutoffs, indicating that anomalous phase is not an artifact. $(β)$ We demonstrate that transition to bimodality in $N_f$=0 is simultaneous with the loss of confinement: anomalous phase occurs for $T_c < T < T_{ch}$, where $T_{ch}$ is the valence chiral restoration temperature. $(γ)$ Evidence is presented for thermal anomalous phase in $N_f$=2+1 QCD at physical quark masses, whose onset too coincides with the conventional "crossover $T_c$''. We conclude that the anomalous regime $T_c < T < T_{ch}$ is very likely a feature of nature's strong interactions. $(δ)$ Our past studies of zero-temperature $N_f$=12 theories revealed that bimodality also arises via purely light-quark effects. As a result, we expect to encounter anomalous phase on generic paths to valence chiral restoration. We predict its existence also for $N_f$ massless flavors ($T=0$) in the range $N_f^c < N_f < N_f^{ch}$, where $N_f^c$ could be quite low. Conventional arguments would associate $N_f^{ch}$ with the onset of conformal window.

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arXiv2015

Charm and strange quark masses and $f_{D_s}$ from overlap fermions

We use overlap fermions as valence quarks to calculate meson masses in a wide quark mass range on the $2+1$-flavor domain-wall fermion gauge configurations generated by the RBC and UKQCD Collaborations. The well-defined quark masses in the overlap fermion formalism and the clear valence quark mass dependence of meson masses observed from the calculation facilitate a direct derivation of physical current quark masses through a global fit to the lattice data, which incorporates $O(a^2)$ and $O(m_c^4a^4)$ corrections, chiral extrapolation, and quark mass interpolation. Using the physical masses of $D_s$, $D_s^*$ and $J/ψ$ as inputs, Sommer's scale parameter $r_0$ and the masses of charm quark and strange quark in the $\overline{\rm MS}$ scheme are determined to be $r_0=0.465(4)(9)$ fm, $m_c^{\overline{\rm MS}}(2\,{\rm GeV})=1.118(6)(24)$ GeV (or $m_c^{\overline{\rm MS}}(m_c)=1.304(5)(20)$ GeV), and $m_s^{\overline{\rm MS}}(2\,{\rm GeV})=0.101(3)(6)\,{\rm GeV}$, respectively. Furthermore, we observe that the mass difference of the vector meson and the pseudoscalar meson with the same valence quark content is proportional to the reciprocal of the square root of the valence quark masses. The hyperfine splitting of charmonium, $M_{J/ψ}-M_{η_c}$, is determined to be 119(2)(7) MeV, which is in good agreement with the experimental value. We also predict the decay constant of $D_s$ to be $f_{D_s}=254(2)(4)$ MeV. The masses of charmonium $P$-wave states $χ_{c0}, χ_{c1}$ and $h_c$ are also in good agreement with experiments.

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arXiv2015

Chiral Symmetry Breaking and Chiral Polarization: Tests for Finite Temperature and Many Flavors

It was recently conjectured that, in SU(3) gauge theories with fundamental quarks, valence spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking is equivalent to condensation of local dynamical chirality and appearance of chiral polarization scale $Λ_{ch}$. Here we consider more general association involving the low-energy layer of chirally polarized modes which, in addition to its width ($Λ_{ch}$), is also characterized by volume density of participating modes ($Ω$) and the volume density of total chirality ($Ω_{ch}$). Few possible forms of the correspondence are discussed, paying particular attention to singular cases where $Ω$ emerges as the most versatile characteristic. The notion of finite-volume "order parameter", capturing the nature of these connections, is proposed. We study the effects of temperature (in N$_f$=0 QCD) and light quarks (in N$_f$=12), both in the regime of possible symmetry restoration, and find agreement with these ideas. In N$_f$=0 QCD, results from several volumes indicate that, at the lattice cutoff studied, the deconfinement temperature $T_c$ is strictly smaller than the overlap-valence chiral transition temperature $T_{ch}$ in real Polyakov line vacuum. Somewhat similar intermediate phase (in quark mass) is also seen in N$_f$=12. It is suggested that deconfinement in N$_f$=0 is related to indefinite convexity of absolute X-distributions.

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arXiv2015

Pion electric polarizability from lattice QCD

Electromagnetic polarizabilities are important parameters for understanding the interaction between photons and hadrons. For pions these quantities are poorly constrained experimentally since they can only be measured indirectly. New experiments at CERN and Jefferson Lab are planned that will measure the polarizabilities more precisely. Lattice QCD can be used to compute these quantities directly in terms of quark and gluons degrees of freedom, using the background field method. We present results for the electric polarizability for two different quark masses, light enough to connect to chiral perturbation theory. These are currently the lightest quark masses used in polarizability studies.

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arXiv2014

Broken Valence Chiral Symmetry and Chiral Polarization of Dirac Spectrum in N$_f$=12 QCD at Small Quark Mass

The validity of recently proposed equivalence between valence spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking (vSChSB) and chiral polarization of low energy Dirac spectrum (ChP) in SU(3) gauge theory, is examined for the case of twelve mass-degenerate fundamental quark flavors. We find that the vSChSB-ChP correspondence holds for regularized systems studied. Moreover, our results suggest that vSChSB occurs in two qualitatively different circumstances: there is a quark mass $m_c$ such that for $m > m_c$ the mode condensing Dirac spectrum exhibits standard monotonically increasing density, while for $m_{ch} < m < m_c$ the peak around zero separates from the bulk of the spectrum, with density showing a pronounced depletion at intermediate scales. Valence chiral symmetry restoration may occur at yet smaller masses $m < m_{ch}$, but this has not yet been seen by overlap valence probe, leaving the $m_{ch}=0$ possibility open. The latter option could place massless N$_f$=12 theory outside of conformal window. Anomalous behavior of overlap Dirac spectrum for $m_{ch} < m < m_c$ is qualitatively similar to one observed previously in zero and few-flavor theories as an effect of thermal agitation.

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arXiv2014

Distribution of Canonical Determinants in QCD

The distribution of canonical determinants in QCD is determined by means of chiral perturbation theory. For a non-zero quark charge the canonical determinants take complex values. In the dilute pion gas approximation, we compute all moments of the magnitude of the canonical determinants, as well as the first nonvanishing moments of the real and imaginary parts. The non-trivial cancellation between the real and the imaginary parts of the canonical determinants is derived and the signal to noise ratio is discussed. The analytical distributions are compared to lattice data. The average density of the magnitude of the canonical determinants is determined as well and is shown to be given by a variant of the log-normal distribution.

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arXiv2014

Deconfinement, Chiral Symmetry Breaking and Chiral Polarization

We examine the feasibility of the proposition that there is a temperature range T$_c$ < T < T$_{ch}$ in N$_f$=0 QCD, where real Polyakov line (deconfined) vacuum exhibits valence spontaneous chiral symetry breaking and dynamical chiral polarization of Dirac eigenmodes. Detailed finite-volume analysis convincingly demonstrates the existence of such phase at fixed cutoff (a=0.085 fm). Moreover, it is found that this behavior also takes place closer to the continuum limit (a=0.060 fm) without qualitative change in its properties.

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arXiv2014

Update on the sea contributions to hadron polarizabilities via reweighting

We have made significant progress on extending lattice QCD calculation of the polarizability of the neutron and other hadrons to include the effects of charged dynamical quarks. This is done by perturbatively reweighting the charges of the sea quarks to couple them to the background field. The dominant challenge in such a calculation is stochastic estimation of the weight factors, and we discuss the difficulties in this estimation. Here we use an extremely aggressive dilution scheme with N = 124,416 sources per configuration to reduce the stochastic noise to a manageable level. We find that α_E = 2.70(55) * 10^-4 fm^3 for the neutron on one ensemble. We show that low-mode substitution can be used in tandem with dilution to construct an even better estimator, and introduce the offdiagonal matrix element mapping technique for predicting estimator quality.

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arXiv2014

Sea contributions to the electric polarizability of the hadrons

We present a lattice QCD calculation of the polarizability of the neutron and other neutral hadrons that includes the effects of the background field on the sea quarks. This is done by perturbatively reweighting the charges of the sea quarks to couple them to the background field. The main challenge in such a calculation is stochastic estimation of the weight factors, and we discuss the difficulties in this estimation. Here we use an extremely aggressive dilution scheme to reduce the stochastic noise to a manageable level. The pion mass in our calculation is 306 MeV and the lattice size is 3 fm. For neutron, we find that $α_E = 2.70(55) * 10^{-4}fm^3$, which is the most precise lattice QCD determination of the polarizability to date that includes sea effects.

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arXiv2014

Electric polarizability of neutral hadrons from dynamical lattice QCD ensembles

We present a valence calculation of the electric polarizability of the neutron, neutral pion, and neutral kaon on two dynamically generated nHYP-clover ensembles. The pion masses for these ensembles are 227(2) MeV and 306(1) MeV, which are the lowest ones used in polarizability studies. This is part of a program geared towards determining these parameters at the physical point. We carry out a high statistics calculation that allows us to: (1) perform an extrapolation of the kaon polarizability to the physical point; we find $α_K =0.269(43)\times10^{-4}$fm$^{3}$, (2) quantitatively compare our neutron polarizability results with predictions from $χ$PT, and (3) analyze the dependence on both the valence and sea quark masses. The kaon polarizability varies slowly with the light quark mass and the extrapolation can be done with high confidence.

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arXiv2013

QCD at imaginary chemical potential with Wilson fermions

We investigate the phase diagram in the temperature, imaginary chemical potential plane for QCD with three degenerate quark flavors using Wilson type fermions. While more expensive than the staggered fermions used in past studies in this area, Wilson fermions can be used safely to simulate systems with three quark flavors. In this talk, we focus on the (pseudo)critical line that extends from $μ=0$ in the imaginary chemical potential plane, trace it to the Roberge-Weiss line, and determine its location relative to the Roberge-Weiss transition point. In order to smoothly follow the (pseudo)critical line in this plane we perform a multi-histogram reweighting in both temperature and chemical potential. To perform reweighting in the chemical potential we use the compression formula to compute the determinants exactly. Our results are compatible with the standard scenario.

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arXiv2013

Update on the Sea Contributions to Hadron Electric Polarizabilities through Reweighting

We present the results of a reweighting calculation to compute the contribution of the charged quark sea to the neutron electric polarizability. The chief difficulty is the stochastic estimation of weight factors, and we present a hopping parameter expansion-based technique for reducing the stochastic noise, along with a discussion of why this particular reweighting is so difficult. We used this technique to estimate weight factors for 300 configurations of nHYP-clover fermions and compute the neutron polarizability, but the reweighting greatly inflates the overall statistical error, driven by the stochastic noise in the weight factors.

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arXiv2013

Valence calculation of the electric polarizability on nHYP-Clover ensembles

We present preliminary calculations for the electric polarizability of the neutral pion and neutron on three dynamically generated nHYP-Clover ensembles. We use two different pion masses ($m_π \simeq 300$ and 220 MeV) to gauge the chiral behavior. The effects of partial quenching are analyzed by computing a string of partial quenched valence masses for each ensemble. We also analyzed the volume dependence using elongated lattices, where the elongation is in the direction of the electric field.

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arXiv2013

Spontaneous Chiral Symmetry Breaking as Condensation of Dynamical Chirality

The occurrence of spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking (SChSB) is equivalent to sufficient abundance of Dirac near-zeromodes. However, dynamical mechanism leading to breakdown of chiral symmetry should be naturally reflected in chiral properties of the modes. Here we offer such connection, presenting evidence that SChSB in QCD proceeds via the appearance of modes exhibiting dynamical tendency for local chiral polarization. These modes form a band of finite width Lambda_ch (chiral polarization scale) around the surface of otherwise anti--polarized Dirac sea, and condense. Lambda_ch characterizes the dynamics of the breaking phenomenon and can be converted to a quark mass scale, thus offering conceptual means to determine which quarks of nature are governed by broken chiral dynamics. It is proposed that, within the context of SU(3) gauge theories with fundamental Dirac quarks, mode condensation is equivalent to chiral polarization. This makes Lambda_ch an "order parameter" of SChSB, albeit without local dynamical field representation away from chiral limit. Several uses of these features, both at zero and finite temperature, are discussed. Our initial estimates are Lambda_ch~150 MeV (N_f=0), Lambda_ch~80 MeV (N_f=2+1, physical point), and that the strange quark is too heavy to be crucially influenced by broken chiral symmetry.

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arXiv2013

Dynamical Local Chirality and Chiral Symmetry Breaking

We present some of the reasoning and results substantiating the notion that spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking (SChSB) in QCD is encoded in local chiral properties of Dirac eigenmodes. Such association is possible when viewing chirality as a dynamical effect, measured with respect to the benchmark of statistically independent left-right components. Following this rationale leads to describing local chiral behavior by a taylor-made correlation, namely the recently introduced correlation coefficient of polarization C_A. In this language, correlated modes (C_A>0) show dynamical preference for local chirality while anti-correlated modes (C_A<0) favor anti-chirality. Our conclusion is that SChSB in QCD can be viewed as dominance of low-energy correlation (chirality) over anti-correlation (anti-chirality) of Dirac sea. The spectral range of local chirality, chiral polarization scale Lambda_ch, is a dynamically generated scale in the theory associated with SChSB. One implication of these findings is briefly discussed.

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arXiv2012

Sea Contributions to Hadron Electric Polarizabilities through Reweighting

As part of our ongoing lattice study of the electric polarizabilities of hadrons using the background field approach, we use reweighting to examine the effect of the field on the sea quarks. As with other reweighting studies, the chief difficulty lies in the construction of a stochastic estimate of the ratio of the fermion determinants. In contrast to the case of reweighting in the quark mass, these estimators converge extremely slowly, and are resistant to common variance-reduction techniques such as low-mode subtraction. However, it is possible to construct an alternate estimator, taking advantage of the fact that we are interested in only perturbatively small fields; this estimator is susceptible to a variance-reduction technique based on a hopping parameter expansion.

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arXiv2012

Chiral polarization scale of QCD vacuum and spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking

It has recently been found that dynamics of pure glue QCD supports the low energy band of Dirac modes with local chiral properties qualitatively different from that of a bulk: while bulk modes suppress chirality relative to statistical independence between left and right, the band modes enhance it. The width of such chirally polarized zone - chiral polarization scale Lambda_ch - has been shown to be finite in the continuum limit at fixed physical volume. Here we present evidence that Lambda_ch remains non-zero also in the infinite volume, and is therefore a dynamical scale in the theory. Our experiments in N_f=2+1 QCD support the proposition that the same holds in the massless limit, connecting Lambda_ch to spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking. In addition, our results suggest that thermal agitation in quenched QCD destroys both chiral polarization and condensation of Dirac modes at the same temperature T_ch > T_c.

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