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F. Karsch

Publications and source records attributed to F. Karsch.

At least 127 records · Page 7Linked to original sources

A Lattice Calculation of Thermal Dilepton Rates

Using clover improved Wilson fermions we calculate thermal vector meson correlation functions above the deconfinement phase transition of quenched QCD. At temperatures 1.5 Tc and 3Tc they are found to differ by less than 15% from that of a freely propagating quark anti-quark pair. This puts severe constraints on the dilepton production rate and in particular rules out a strong divergence of the dilepton rate at low energies. The vector spectral function, which has been reconstructed using the Maximum Entropy Method, yields an enhancement of the dilepton rate over the Born rate of at most a factor two in the energy interval 4 < E/T < 8 and suggests that the spectrum is cut-off at low energies by a thermal mass threshold of about (2-3)T.

hep-lat↗

Common features of deconfining and chiral critical points in QCD and the three state Potts model in an external field

In the presented study we investigated the second order endpoints of the lines of first order phase transitions which emerge for the QCD in the heavy and light quark mass regime and for the three-dimensional three state Potts model with an external field. We located the endpoints with Binder cumulants and constructed the energy-like and ordering field like observables. The joint probability distributions of these scaling fields and the values of the Binder cumulant confirm that all three endpoints belong to the universality class of the 3-dimensional Ising model.

hep-lat↗

Aspects of the thermal phase transition of QCD with small chemical potential

We propose a new method to investigate the thermal properties of QCD with a small chemical potential $(μ)$. The derivatives of the phase transition point with respect to $μ$ are computed for 2 flavors of p4-improved staggered fermions. We moreover comment on the complex phase of the fermion determinant in finite-density QCD.

hep-lat↗

Meson Spectral Functions at finite Temperature

The Maximum Entropy Method provides a Bayesian approach to reconstruct the spectral functions from discrete points in Euclidean time. The applicability of the approach at finite temperature is probed with the thermal meson correlation function. Furthermore the influence of fuzzing/smearing techniques on the spectral shape is investigated. We present first results for meson spectral functions at several temperatures below and above $T_c$. The correlation functions were obtained from quenched calculations with Clover fermions on large isotropic lattices of the size $(24-64)^3 \times 16$. We compare the resulting pole masses with the ones obtained from standard 2-exponential fits of spatial and temporal correlation functions at finite temperature and in the vacuum. The deviation of the meson spectral functions from free spectral functions is examined above the critical temperature.

hep-lat↗

An new order parameter with renormalized Polyakov loops

It is well established that physical quantities like the heavy quark potentials get temperature independent at sufficiently short distances. As a first application of this feature we suggest a new order parameter for the confinement/deconfinement phase transition. Our investigations are based on recent lattice studies.

hep-lat↗

Short distance physics with heavy quark potentials

We present lattice studies of heavy quark potentials in the quenched approximation of QCD at finite temperatures. Both, the color singlet and color averaged potentials are calculated. While the potentials are well known at large distances, we give a detailed analysis of their short distance behavior (from 0.015 fm to 1 fm) near the critical temperature. At these distances we expect that the T-dependent potentials go over into the zero temperature potential. Indeed, we find evidences that the temperature influence gets suppressed and the potentials starts to become a unique function of the underlying distance scale. We use this feature to normalize the heavy quark potentials at short distances and extract the free energy of the quark system in a gluonic heat bath.

hep-lat↗

The Chiral Critical Point in 3-Flavour QCD

We determine the second order endpoint of the line of first order phase transitions, which occur in the light quark mass regime of 3-flavour QCD at finite temperature, and analyze universal properties of this chiral critical point. A detailed analysis of Binder cumulants and the joint probability distributions of energy like and ordering-field like observables confirms that the chiral critical point belongs to the universality class of the three dimensional Ising model. From a calculation with improved gauge and staggered fermion actions we estimate that the transition is first order for pseudo-scalar meson masses less than about 200 MeV.

hep-lat↗

Propagators and Dimensional Reduction of Hot SU(2) Gauge Theory

We investigate the large distance behavior of the electric and magnetic propagators of hot SU(2) gauge theory in different gauges using lattice simulations of the full 4d theory and the effective, dimensionally reduced 3d theory. Comparison of the 3d and 4d propagators suggests that dimensional reduction works surprisingly well down to the temperature T=2 T_c. Within statistical uncertainty the electric screening mass is found to be gauge independent. The magnetic propagator, on the other hand, exhibits a complicated gauge dependent structure at low momentum.

hep-lat↗

Quark Mass and Flavour Dependence of the QCD Phase Transition

We analyze the quark mass and flavour dependence of the QCD phase transition temperature. When the lightest pseudo-scalar meson mass (m_PS) is larger than 2 GeV the critical temperature is controlled by the gluonic sector of QCD alone. For smaller values of the lightest meson mass the pseudo-critical temperature decreases slowly with m_PS. For a large regime of meson masses the pseudo-critical temperature of 2-flavour QCD is about 10% larger than in the 3-flavour case. On lattices with temporal extent N_t=4 an extrapolation to the chiral limit yields T_c = 173(8) MeV and 154(8) MeV for 2 and 3-flavour QCD, respectively. We also analyze dynamical quark mass effects on the screening of the heavy quark potential. A detailed analysis of the heavy quark free energy in 3-flavour QCD shows that close to T_c screening effects are approximately quark mass independent already for pseudo-scalar meson masses m_PS = 800 MeV and screening sets in at distances r = 0.3 fm.

hep-lat↗

Effective Z(2) Spin Models of Deconfinement and Percolation in SU(2) Gauge Theory

Effective theories are helpful tools to gain an intuitive insight into phenomena governed by complex laws. In this work we show by means of Monte Carlo simulations that Z(2) spin models with only spin-spin interactions approximate rather well the critical behavior of SU(2) gauge theory at finite temperature. These models are then used to formulate an effective description of Polyakov loop percolation, which is shown to reproduce the thermal critical behaviour of SU(2) gauge theory.

hep-lat↗

Magnetic Screening in Hot Non-Abelian Gauge Theory

We analyze the large distance and low-momentum behavior of the magnetic gluon propagator of the SU(2) gauge theory at finite temperature. Lattice calculations within the 4-dimensional as well as the effective, dimensionally reduced 3-dimensional gauge theories in generalized Landau gauges and MAG show that the magnetic propagator is strongly infrared suppressed in Landau gauges but stays large and finite in MAG. Despite these differences in the low-momentum behavior of the propagator calculated in different gauges the magnetic fields are exponentially screened in all gauges considered. From the propagator calculated in maximally Abelian gauge we find for the screening mass, m_M = (1.48 +/- 0.17) T at T=2 T_c.

hep-lat↗

Testing MEM with Diquark and thermal Meson Correlation Functions

When applying the maximum entropy method (MEM) to the analysis of hadron correlation functions in QCD a central issue is to understand to what extent this method can distinguish bound states, resonances and continuum contributions to spectral functions. We discuss these issues by analyzing meson and diquark correlation functions at zero temperature as well as free quark anti-quark correlators. The latter test the applicability of MEM to high temperature QCD.

hep-lat↗

Finite Temperature Meson Correlation Functions in HTL Approximation

We calculate temporal correlators and their spectral functions with meson quantum numbers in the deconfined phase of QCD using the hard thermal loop (HTL) approximation for the quark propagator. Although this approach does not result in a complete next-to-leading order perturbative calculation it takes into account important medium effects such as thermal quark masses and Landau damping in the quark-gluon plasma. We show that both effects lead to competing modifications of the free mesonic correlation functions. We find that correlators in scalar channels are only moderately influenced by the HTL medium effects, while the HTL-vertex corrections lead to divergent vector correlators.

hep-ph↗

Flavor and Quark Mass Dependence of QCD Thermodynamics

We calculate the transition temperature in 2 and 3-flavor QCD using improved gauge and staggered fermion actions on lattices with temporal extent Nt=4. We find Tc=173(8)MeV and 154(8)MeV for nf=2 and 3, respectively. In the case of 3-flavor QCD we present evidence that the chiral critical point, 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.

hep-lat↗

Screening in Hot SU(2) Gauge Theory and Propagators in 3d Adjoint Higgs model

We investigate the large distance behavior of the electric and magnetic propagators of hot SU(2) gauge theory in different gauges using lattice simulations of the full 4d theory and the effective, dimensionally reduced 3d theory. A comparison of the 3d and 4d data for the propagators suggests that dimensional reduction works surprisingly well down to temperatures T=2 T_c. A detailed study of the volume dependence of magnetic propagators is performed. The electric propagators show exponential decay at large distances in all gauges considered and a possible gauge dependence of the electric screening mass turns out to be statistically insignificant.

hep-lat↗

Percolation and Critical Behaviour in SU(2) Gauge Theory

The paramagnetic-ferromagnetic transition in the Ising model can be described as percolation of suitably defined clusters. We have tried to extend such picture to the confinement-deconfinement transition of SU(2) pure gauge theory, which is in the same universality class of the Ising model. The cluster definition is derived by approximating SU(2) by means of Ising-like effective theories. The geometrical transition of such clusters turns out to describe successfully the thermal counterpart for two different lattice regularizations of (3+1)-d SU(2).

hep-lat↗