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Bastian B. Brandt

Publications and source records attributed to Bastian B. Brandt.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

The light Roberge-Weiss tricritical endpoint at imaginary isospin and baryon chemical potential

Imaginary chemical potentials serve as a useful tool to constrain the QCD phase diagram and to gain insight into the thermodynamics of strongly interacting matter. In this study, we report on the first determination of the phase diagram for arbitrary imaginary baryon and isospin chemical potentials at high temperature using one-loop perturbation theory, revealing a nontrivial structure of Roberge-Weiss (RW) phase transitions in this plane. Subsequently, this system is simulated numerically with $N_{\rm f}=2$ unimproved staggered quarks on $N_τ=4$ lattices at a range of temperatures at one of the RW phase transitions. We establish a lower bound for the light quark mass, where the first-order transition line terminates in a tricritical point. It is found that this tricritical mass is increased as compared to the case of purely baryonic imaginary chemical potentials, indicating that our setup is more advantageous for identifying critical behavior towards the chiral limit. Finally, the dynamics of local Polyakov loop clusters is also studied in conjuction with the RW phase transition.

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QCD thermodynamics at non-zero isospin asymmetry

We study the thermodynamic properties of QCD at nonzero isospin chemical potential using improved staggered quarks at physical quark masses. In particular, we discuss the determination of the equation of state at zero and nonzero temperatures and show results. Using the results for the isospin density $n_I$, we also determine the phase diagram in the $(n_I,T)$-plane.

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Revisiting the flux tube spectrum of 3d SU(2) lattice gauge theory

We perform a high precision measurement of the spectrum of the QCD flux tube in three-dimensional $\SU(2)$ gauge theory at multiple lattice spacings. We compare the results at large $q\bar{q}$ separations $R$ to the spectrum predicted by the effective string theory, including the leading order boundary term with a non-universal coefficient. We find qualitative agreement with the predictions from the leading order Nambu-Goto string theory down to small values of $R$, while, at the same time, observing the predicted splitting of the second excited state due to the boundary term. On fine lattices and at large $R$ we observe slight deviations from the EST predictions for the first excited state.

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Searching for the BCS phase at nonzero isospin asymmetry

According to perturbation theory predictions, QCD matter in the zero-temperature, high-density limits of QCD at nonzero isospin chemical potential is expected to be in a superfluid Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) phase of $u$ and $\bar{d}$ Cooper pairs. It is also expected, on symmetry grounds, that such phase connects via an analytical crossover to the phase with Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of charged pions at $μ_\text{I}\geq m_π/2$. With lattice results, showing some indications that the deconfinement crossover also smoothly penetrates the BEC phase, the conjecture was made that the former connects continuously to the BEC-BCS crossover. We compute the spectrum of the Dirac operator, and use generalized Banks-Casher relations, to test this conjecture and identify signatures of the superfluid BCS phase.

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Pion condensation in the early Universe at nonvanishing lepton flavor asymmetry and its gravitational wave signatures

We investigate the possible formation of a Bose-Einstein condensed phase of pions in the early Universe at nonvanishing values of lepton flavor asymmetries. A hadron resonance gas model with pion interactions, based on first-principle lattice QCD simulations at nonzero isospin density, is used to evaluate cosmic trajectories at various values of electron, muon, and tau lepton asymmetries that satisfy the available constraints on the total lepton asymmetry. The cosmic trajectory can pass through the pion condensed phase if the combined electron and muon asymmetry is sufficiently large: $|l_e + l_μ| \gtrsim 0.1$, with little sensitivity to the difference $l_e - l_μ$ between the individual flavor asymmetries. Future constraints on the values of the individual lepton flavor asymmetries will thus be able to either confirm or rule out the condensation of pions during the cosmic QCD epoch. We demonstrate that the pion condensed phase leaves an imprint both on the spectrum of primordial gravitational waves and on the mass distribution of primordial black holes at the QCD scale e.g. the black hole binary of recent LIGO event GW190521 can be formed in that phase.

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Lattice QCD estimate of the quark-gluon plasma photon emission rate

We present a computation of the photon emission rate of the quark-gluon plasma from two-flavor lattice QCD at a temperature of 254 MeV, which follows up on the work presented in [1]. We perform a continuum extrapolation of the vector-current correlator, and consider a linear combination of the Lorentz indices corresponding to a UV-finite spectral function. To extract the spectral function from the lattice correlators, an ill-posed inverse problem, we model the spectral function with a Padé ansatz. We further constrain our analysis by simultaneously fitting data with different momenta. We present results for a multi-momentum fit including the three smallest momenta available from our lattice analysis.

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Exploring the QCD phase diagram via reweighting from isospin chemical potential

We investigate the QCD phase diagram for small values of baryon and strange quark chemical potentials from simulations at non-zero isospin chemical potential. Simulations at pure isospin chemical potential are not hindered by the sign problem and pion condensation can be observed for sufficiently large isospin chemical potentials. We study how the related phase boundary evolves with baryonic and strange chemical potentials via reweighting in quark chemical potentials and discuss our results. Furthermore, we propose and implement an alternative method to approach nonzero baryon (and strange quark) chemical potentials. This method involves simulations where physical quarks are paired with auxiliary quarks in unphysical "isospin" doublets and a decoupling of the auxiliary quarks by mass reweighting.

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Induced QCD II: Numerical results

We numerically explore an alternative discretization of continuum $\text{SU}(N_c)$ Yang-Mills theory on a Euclidean spacetime lattice, originally introduced by Budzcies and Zirnbauer for gauge group $\text{U}(N_c)$. This discretization can be reformulated such that the self-interactions of the gauge field are induced by a path integral over $N_b$ auxiliary bosonic fields, which couple linearly to the gauge field. In the first paper of the series we have shown that the theory reproduces continuum $\text{SU}(N_c)$ Yang-Mills theory in $d=2$ dimensions if $N_b$ is larger than $N_c-\frac{3}{4}$ and conjectured, following the argument of Budzcies and Zirnbauer, that this remains true for $d>2$. In the present paper, we test this conjecture by performing lattice simulations of the simplest nontrivial case, i.e., gauge group $\text{SU}(2)$ in three dimensions. We show that observables computed in the induced theory, such as the static $q\bar q$ potential and the deconfinement transition temperature, agree with the same observables computed from the ordinary plaquette action up to lattice artifacts. We also find that the bound for $N_b$ can be relaxed to $N_c-\frac{5}{4}$ as conjectured in our earlier paper. Studies of how the new discretization can be used to change the order of integration in the path integral to arrive at dual formulations of QCD are left for future work.

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Testing the strength of the $\text{U}_A(1)$ anomaly at the chiral phase transition in two-flavour QCD

We study the thermal transition of QCD with two degenerate light flavours by lattice simulations using $\mathcal{O}(a)$-improved Wilson quarks. Particular emphasis lies on the pattern of chiral symmetry restoration, which we probe via the static screening correlators. On $32^3$ volumes we observe that the screening masses in transverse iso-vector vector and axial-vector channels become degenerate at the transition temperature. The splitting between the screening masses in iso-vector scalar and pseudoscalar channels is strongly reduced compared to the splitting at zero temperature and is actually consistent with zero within uncertainties. In this proceedings article we extend our studies to matrix elements and iso-singlet correlation functions. Furthermore, we present results on larger volumes, including first results at the physical pion mass.

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Spectrum of the open QCD flux tube and its effective string description

I perform a high precision measurement of the static quark-antiquark potential in three-dimensional ${\rm SU}(N)$ gauge theory with $N=2$ to 6. The results are compared to the effective string theory for the QCD flux tube and I obtain continuum limit results for the string tension and the non-universal leading order boundary coefficient, including an extensive analysis of all types of systematic uncertainties. The magnitude of the boundary coefficient decreases with increasing $N$, but remains non-vanishing in the large-$N$ limit. I also test for the presence of possible contributions from rigidity or massive modes and compare the results for the string theory parameters to data for the excited states.

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New class of compact stars: Pion stars

We investigate the viability of a new type of compact star whose main constituent is a Bose-Einstein condensate of charged pions. Several different setups are considered, where a gas of charged leptons and neutrinos is also present. The pionic equation of state is obtained from lattice QCD simulations in the presence of an isospin chemical potential, and requires no modeling of the nuclear force. The gravitationally bound configurations of these systems are found by solving the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkov equations. We discuss weak decays within the pion condensed phase and elaborate on the generation mechanism of such objects.

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QCD at nonzero isospin asymmetry

We study the phase diagram and the thermodynamic properties of QCD at nonzero isospin asymmetry at physical quark masses with staggered quarks. In particular, continuum results for the phase boundary between the normal and the pion condensation phases and the chiral/deconfinement transition are presented. Our findings indicate that the pion condensation phase is restricted to $T\lesssim170$~MeV for isospin chemical potentials up to 325~MeV. We also use the data to test the range of validity of the Taylor expansion method and show first results for the equation of state.

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Reliability of Taylor expansions in QCD

We investigate the reliability of the Taylor expansion method in QCD with isospin chemical potentials using lattice simulations. By comparing the expansion of the number density to direct results, the range of validity of the leading- and next-to-leading order expansions is determined. We also elaborate on the convergence properties of the Taylor series by comparing the leading estimate for the radius of convergence to the position of the nearest singularity, i.e. the onset of pion condensation. Our results provide a handle for quantifying the uncertainties of Taylor expansions in baryon chemical potentials.

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Weak decay of magnetized pions

The leptonic decay of charged pions is investigated in the presence of background magnetic fields. In this situation Lorentz symmetry is broken and new fundamental decay constants need to be introduced, associated with the decay via the vector part of the electroweak current. We calculate the magnetic field-dependence of both the usual and a new decay constant non-perturbatively on the lattice. We employ both Wilson and staggered quarks and extrapolate the results to the continuum limit. With this non-perturbative input we calculate the tree-level electroweak amplitude for the full decay rate in strong magnetic fields. We find that the muonic decay of the charged pion is enhanced drastically by the magnetic field. We comment on possible astrophysical implications.

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Meson masses in electromagnetic fields with Wilson fermions

We determine the light meson spectrum in QCD in the presence of background magnetic fields using quenched Wilson fermions. Our continuum extrapolated results indicate a monotonous reduction of the connected neutral pion mass as the magnetic field grows. The vector meson mass is found to remain nonzero, a finding relevant for the conjectured $ρ$-meson condensation at strong magnetic fields. The continuum extrapolation was facilitated by adding a novel magnetic field-dependent improvement term to the additive quark mass renormalization. Without this term, sizable lattice artifacts that would deceptively indicate an unphysical rise of the connected neutral pion mass for strong magnetic fields are present. We also investigate the impact of these lattice artifacts on further observables like magnetic polarizabilities and discuss the magnetic field-induced mixing between $ρ$-mesons and pions. We also derive Ward-Takashi identities for QCD+QED both in the continuum formulation and for (order $a$-improved) Wilson fermions.

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The pion quasiparticle in the low-temperature phase of QCD

We extend our previous studies [PhysRevD.90.054509, PhysRevD.92.094510] of the pion quasiparticle in the low-temperature phase of two-flavor QCD with support from chiral effective theory. This includes the analysis performed on a finite temperature ensemble of size $20\times 64^3$ at $T\approx 151$MeV and a lighter zero-temperature pion mass $m_π \approx 185$ MeV. Furthermore, we investigate the Gell-Mann--Oakes-Renner relation at finite temperature and the Dey-Eletsky-Ioffe mixing theorem at finite quark mass.

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An estimate for the thermal photon rate from lattice QCD

We estimate the production rate of photons by the quark-gluon plasma in lattice QCD. We propose a new correlation function which provides better control over the systematic uncertainty in estimating the photon production rate at photon momenta in the range πT/2 to 2πT. The relevant Euclidean vector current correlation functions are computed with $N_{\mathrm f}$ = 2 Wilson clover fermions in the chirally-symmetric phase. In order to estimate the photon rate, an ill-posed problem for the vector-channel spectral function must be regularized. We use both a direct model for the spectral function and a model-independent estimate from the Backus-Gilbert method to give an estimate for the photon rate.

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Pion decay in magnetic fields

The leptonic decay of the charged pion in the presence of background magnetic fields is investigated using quenched Wilson fermions. It is demonstrated that the magnetic field opens up a new channel for this decay. The magnetic field-dependence of the decay constants for both the ordinary and the new channel is determined. Using these inputs from QCD, we calculate the total decay rate perturbatively.

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