arXiv subjects

F. Karsch

Publications and source records attributed to F. Karsch.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2009

Charmonium correlators and spectral functions at finite temperature

We study charmonium correlators and spectral functions in quenched QCD, using Clover improved Wilson fermions on very fine (0.015 fm) isotropic lattices at 0.75 Tc and 1.5 Tc. We use a new approach to distinguish the zero mode contribution from the other contributions. Once this is removed, we find that the ratios of correlators to reconstructed correlators remain almost unity at all distances. The ground state peaks of spectral functions obtained at 0.75 Tc are reliable and robust. The present accuracy and limited number of points in the temporal direction at 1.5 Tc do not allow for a reliable conclusion about a possible melting of charmonium states in the QGP.

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arXiv2009

On the magnetic equation of state in (2+1)-flavor QCD

A first study of critical behavior in the vicinity of the chiral phase transition of (2+1)-flavor QCD is presented. We analyze the quark mass and volume dependence of the chiral condensate and chiral susceptibilities in QCD with two degenerate light quark masses and a strange quark. The strange quark mass (m_s) is chosen close to its physical value; the two degenerate light quark masses (m_l) are varied in a wide range 1/80 \le m_l/m_s \le 2/5, where the smallest light quark mass value corresponds to a pseudo-scalar Goldstone mass of about 75 MeV. All calculations are performed with staggered fermions on lattices with temporal extent Nt=4. We show that numerical results are consistent with O(N) scaling in the chiral limit. We find that in the region of physical light quark mass values, m_l/m_s \simeq 1/20, the temperature and quark mass dependence of the chiral condensate is already dominated by universal properties of QCD that are encoded in the scaling function for the chiral order parameter, the magnetic equation of state. We also provide evidence for the influence of thermal fluctuations of Goldstone modes on the chiral condensate at finite temperature. At temperatures below, but close to the chiral phase transition at vanishing quark mass, this leads to a characteristic dependence of the light quark chiral condensate on the square root of the light quark mass.

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arXiv2009

Baryon Number, Strangeness and Electric Charge Fluctuations in QCD at High Temperature

We analyze baryon number, strangeness and electric charge fluctuations as well as their correlations in QCD at high temperature. We present results obtained from lattice calculations performed with an improved staggered fermion action (p4-action) at two values of the lattice cut-off with almost physical up and down quark masses and a physical value for the strange quark mass. We compare these results, with an ideal quark gas at high temperature and a hadron resonance gas model at low temperature. We find that fluctuations and correlations are well described by the former already for temperatures about 1.5 times the transition temperature. At low temperature qualitative features of the lattice results are quite well described by a hadron resonance gas model. Higher order cumulants, which become increasingly sensitive to the light pions, however show deviations from a resonance gas in the vicinity of the transition temperature.

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arXiv2009

Equation of state and QCD transition at finite temperature

We calculate the equation of state in 2+1 flavor QCD at finite temperature with physical strange quark mass and almost physical light quark masses using lattices with temporal extent Nt=8. Calculations have been performed with two different improved staggered fermion actions, the asqtad and p4 actions. Overall, we find good agreement between results obtained with these two O(a^2) improved staggered fermion discretization schemes. A comparison with earlier calculations on coarser lattices is performed to quantify systematic errors in current studies of the equation of state. We also present results for observables that are sensitive to deconfining and chiral aspects of the QCD transition on Nt=6 and 8 lattices. We find that deconfinement and chiral symmetry restoration happen in the same narrow temperature interval. In an Appendix we present a simple parametrization of the equation of state that can easily be used in hydrodynamic model calculations. In this parametrization we also incorporated an estimate of current uncertainties in the lattice calculations which arise from cutoff and quark mass effects. We estimate these systematic effects to be about 10 MeV

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arXiv2009

Charmonium correlators and spectral functions at finite temperature

We present an operational approach to address the in-medium behavior of charmonium and analyze the reliability of maximum entropy method (MEM). We study the dependences of the ratio of correlators to the reconstructed one and the free one on the resonance's width and the continuum's threshold. Furthermore, we discuss the issue of the default model dependence of the spectral function obtained from MEM.

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arXiv2008

Correlation functions of the energy-momentum tensor in SU(2) gauge theory at finite temperature

We calculate correlation functions of the energy-momentum tensor in the vicinity of the deconfinement phase transition of (3+1)-dimensional SU(2) gauge theory and discuss their critical behavior in the vicinity of the second order deconfinement transition. We show that correlation functions of the trace of the energy momentum tensor diverge uniformly at the critical point in proportion to the specific heat singularity. Correlation functions of the pressure, on the other hand, stay finite at the critical point. We discuss the consequences of these findings for the analysis of transport coefficients, in particular the bulk viscosity, in the vicinity of a second order phase transition point.

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arXiv2008

The Spatial String Tension and Dimensional Reduction in QCD

We calculate the spatial string tension in (2+1) flavor QCD with physical strange quark mass and almost physical light quark masses using lattices with temporal extent N_tau=4,6 and 8. We compare our results on the spatial string tension with predictions of dimensionally reduced QCD. This suggests that also in the presence of light dynamical quarks dimensional reduction works well down to temperatures 1.5T_c.

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arXiv2008

Lattice cut-off effects and their reduction in studies of QCD thermodynamics at non-zero temperature and chemical potential

We clarify the relation between the improvement of dispersion relations in the fermion sector of lattice regularized QCD and the improvement of bulk thermodynamic observables. We show that in the infinite temperature limit the cut-off dependence in dispersion relations can be eliminated up to O(a^n) corrections, if the quark propagator is chosen to be rotationally invariant up to this order. In bulk thermodynamic observables this eliminates cut-off effects up to the same order at vanishing as well as non-vanishing chemical potential. We furthermore show, that in the infinite temperature, ideal gas limit the dependence of finite cut-off corrections on the chemical potential is given by Bernoulli polynomials which are universal as they do not depend on a particular discretization scheme. We explicitly calculate leading and next-to-leading order cut-off corrections for some staggered and Wilson fermion type actions and compare these with exact evaluations of the free fermion partition functions. This also includes the chirally invariant overlap and domain wall fermion formulations.

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arXiv2008

The QCD Equation of State with almost Physical Quark Masses

We present results on the equation of state in QCD with two light quark flavors and a heavier strange quark. Calculations with improved staggered fermions have been performed on lattices with temporal extent Nt =4 and 6 on a line of constant physics with almost physical quark mass values; the pion mass is about 220 MeV, and the strange quark mass is adjusted to its physical value. High statistics results on large lattices are obtained for bulk thermodynamic observables, i.e. pressure, energy and entropy density, at vanishing quark chemical potential for a wide range of temperatures, 140 MeV < T < 800 MeV. We present a detailed discussion of finite cut-off effects which become particularly significant for temperatures larger than about twice the transition temperature. At these high temperatures we also performed calculations of the trace anomaly on lattices with temporal extent Nt=8. Furthermore, we have performed an extensive analysis of zero temperature observables including the light and strange quark condensates and the static quark potential at zero temperature. These are used to set the temperature scale for thermodynamic observables and to calculate renormalized observables that are sensitive to deconfinement and chiral symmetry restoration and become order parameters in the infinite and zero quark mass limits, respectively.

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arXiv2007

Universal properties of bulk viscosity near the QCD phase transition

We extract the bulk viscosity of hot quark-gluon matter in the presence of light quarks from the recent lattice data on the QCD equation of state. For that purpose we extend the sum rule analysis by including the contribution of light quarks. We also discuss the universal properties of bulk viscosity in the vicinity of a second order phase transition, as it might occur in the chiral limit of QCD at fixed strange quark mass and most likely does occur in two-flavor QCD. We point out that a chiral transition in the O(4) universality class at zero baryon density as well as the transition at the chiral critical point which belongs to the Z(2) universality class both lead to the critical behavior of bulk viscosity. In particular, the latter universality class implies the divergence of the bulk viscosity, which may be used as a signature of the critical point. We discuss the physical picture behind the dramatic increase of bulk viscosity seen in our analysis, and devise possible experimental tests of related phenomena.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2007

Heavy quark free energies for three quark systems at finite temperature

We study the free energy of static three quark systems in singlet, octet, decuplet and average color channels in the quenched approximation and in 2-flavor QCD at finite temperature. We show that in the high temperature phase singlet and decuplet free energies of three quark systems are well described by the sum of the free energies of three diquark systems plus self energy contributions of the three quarks. In the confining low temperature phase we find evidence for a Y-shaped flux tube in SU(3) pure gauge theory, which is less evident in 2-flavor QCD due to the onset of string breaking. We also compare the short distance behavior of octet and decuplet free energies to the free energies of single static quarks in the corresponding color representations.

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arXiv2007

Color Screening and Quark-Quark Interactions in Finite Temperature QCD

We analyze the screening of static diquark sources in 2-flavor QCD and compare results with the screening of static quark-antiquark pairs. We show that a two quark system in a fixed color representations is screened at short distances like a single quark source in the same color representation whereas at large distances the two quarks are screened independently. At high temperatures we observe that the relative strength of the interaction in diquark and quark-antiquark systems, respectively, obeys Casimir scaling. We use this result to examine the possible existence of heavy quark-quark bound states in the high temperature phase of QCD. We find support for the existence of $bb$ states up to about $2T_c$ while $cc$ states are unlikely to be formed above $T_c$.

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arXiv2006

Flavor symmetry breaking and scaling for improved staggered actions in quenched QCD

We present a study of the flavor symmetry breaking in the pion spectrum for various improved staggered fermion actions. To study the effects of link fattening and tadpole improvement, we use three different variants of the p4 action - p4fat3, p4fat7, and p4fat7tad. These are compared to Asqtad and also to naive staggered. To study the pattern of symmetry breaking, we measure all 15 meson masses in the 4-flavor staggered theory. The measurements are done on a quenched gauge background, generated using a one-loop improved Symanzik action with $β=10/g^2 = 7.40, 7.75,$ and 8.00, corresponding to lattice spacings of approximately a = .31 fm., .21 fm., and .14 fm. We also study how the lattice scale set by the $ρ$ mass on each of these ensembles compares to one set by the static quark potential.

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arXiv2006

Study of the finite temperature transition in 3-flavor QCD using the R and RHMC algorithms

We study the finite temperature transition in QCD with three flavors of equal masses using the R and RHMC algorithm on lattices with temporal extent N_τ=4 and 6. For the transition temperature in the continuum limit we find r_0 T_c=0.429(8) for the light pseudo-scalar mass corresponding to the end point of the 1st order transition region. When comparing the results obtained with the R and RHMC algorithms for p4fat3 action we see no significant step-size errors down to a lightest pseudo-scalar mass of m_{ps} r_0=0.4.

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arXiv2006

The transition temperature in QCD

We present a detailed calculation of the transition temperature in QCD with two light and one heavier (strange) quark mass on lattices with temporal extent N_t =4 and 6. Calculations with improved staggered fermions have been performed for various light to strange quark mass ratios in the range, 0.05 <= m_l/m_s <= 0.5, and with a strange quark mass fixed close to its physical value. From a combined extrapolation to the chiral (m_l -> 0) and continuum (aT = 1/N_t -> 0) limits we find for the transition temperature at the physical point T_c r_0 = 0.457(7) where the scale is set by the Sommer-scale parameter r_0 defined as the distance in the static quark potential at which the slope takes on the value, (dV_qq(r)/dr)_r=r_0 = 1.65/r_0^2. Using the currently best known value for r_0 this translates to a transition temperature T_c = 192(7)(4)MeV. The transition temperature in the chiral limit is about 3% smaller. We discuss current ambiguities in the determination of T_c in physical units and also comment on the universal scaling behavior of thermodynamic quantities in the chiral limit.

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arXiv2006

Meson correlation functions at high temperatures

We present preliminary results for the correlation- and spectral functions of different meson channels on the lattice. The main focus lies on gaining control over cut-off as well as on the finite-volume effects. Extrapolations of screening masses above the deconfining temperature are guided by the result of the free ($T=\infty$) case on the lattice and in the continuum. We study the quenched non-perturbatively improved Wilson-clover fermion as well as the hypercube fermion action which might show less cut-off effects.

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arXiv2006

Sequential charmonium dissociation

Finite temperature lattice QCD indicates that the charmonium ground state J/psi can survive in a quark-gluon plasma up to 1.5 T_c or more, while the excited states chi_c and psi-prime are dissociated just above T_c. We assume that the chi_c suffers the same form of suppression as that observed for the psi-prime in SPS experiments, and that the directly produced J/psi is unaffected at presently available energy densities. This provides a parameter-free description of J/psi and psi-prime suppression which agrees quite well with that observed in SPS and RHIC data.

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arXiv2006

Quarkonia in a deconfined gluonic plasma

We discuss lattice results on the properties of finite momentum charmonium states in a gluonic plasma. We also present preliminary results for bottomonium correlators and spectral functions in the plasma. Significant modifications of chi_b states are seen at temperatures of 1.5 Tc.

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