arXiv subjects

Frithjof Karsch

Publications and source records attributed to Frithjof Karsch.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2019

Critical end points in (2+1)-flavor QCD with imaginary chemical potential

We present here the results from an ongoing determination of the critical quark mass in simulations of (2+1)-flavor QCD with an imaginary chemical potential. Studies with unimproved actions found the existence of a critical quark mass value at which the crossover transition ends on a second order phase transition and becomes first order for smaller values of the quark mass for the case of both vanishing and imaginary chemical potential. We use the Highly Improved Staggered Quark (HISQ) action and perform calculations in the Roberge-Weiss (RW) plane, where the value of the critical mass is expected to be largest. The lowest quark mass value used in our simulation corresponds to the pion mass $m_π$, down to $40$ MeV. Contrary to calculations performed with unimproved actions we find no evidence for the occurrence of first order transitions at the smallest quark mass values explored so far. Moreover we also show that the chiral observables are sensitive to the RW transition. Our results also indicate that the RW transition and chiral transition could coincide in the chiral limit.

hep-lat↗

arXiv2019

Hot-dense Lattice QCD: USQCD whitepaper 2018

This document is one of a series of whitepapers from the USQCD collaboration. Here, we outline the opportunities for, prospects of and challenges to the lattice QCD calculations relevant for the understanding of the phases and properties of hot-dense QCD matter. This program of lattice QCD calculations is relevant to current and upcoming heavy-ion experimental programs at RHIC and LHC.

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arXiv2018

QCD phase diagram for finite imaginary chemical potential with HISQ fermions

We present results from an ongoing study of the phase diagram of (2+1)-flavor QCD using the HISQ action with smaller than physical light quark masses in the Roberge-Weiss (RW) plane on lattices with temporal extent $N_τ=4$. We find that the endpoint of the $1^{st}$ order RW transition line remains $2^{nd}$ order at least down to light quark masses corresponding to Goldstone pion masses of $55$ MeV. Furthermore, we show that the chiral condensate is sensitive to the RW transition and may serve as a energy-like operator characterizing universal behavior close to the RW endpoint.

hep-lat↗

arXiv2017

Conserved charge fluctuations at vanishing and non-vanishing chemical potential

Up to 6th order cumulants of fluctuations of net baryon-number, net electric charge and net strangeness as well as correlations among these conserved charge fluctuations are now being calculated in lattice QCD. These cumulants provide a wealth of information on the properties of strong-interaction matter in the transition region from the low temperature hadronic phase to the quark-gluon plasma phase. They can be used to quantify deviations from hadron resonance gas (HRG) model calculations which frequently are used to determine thermal conditions realized in heavy ion collision experiments. Already some second order cumulants like the correlations between net baryon-number and net strangeness or net electric charge differ significantly at temperatures above 155 MeV in QCD and HRG model calculations. We show that these differences increase at non-zero baryon chemical potential constraining the applicability range of HRG model calculations to even smaller values of the temperature.

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arXiv2017

QCD thermodynamics in the crossover/freeze-out region

We use results from a 6-th order Taylor expansion of the QCD equation of state to construct expansions for cumulants of conserved charge fluctuations and their correlations. We show that these cumulants strongly constrain the range of applicability of hadron resonance gas model calculations. We point out that the latter is inappropriate to describe equilibrium properties of QCD at zero and non-zero values of the baryon chemical potential already at T~155 MeV.

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arXiv2016

Lattice QCD results on cumulant ratios at freeze-out

Ratios of cumulants of net proton-number fluctuations measured by the STAR Collaboration show strong deviations from a skellam distribution, which should describe thermal properties of cumulant ratios, if proton-number fluctuations are generated in equilibrium and a hadron resonance gas (HRG) model would provide a suitable description of thermodynamics at the freeze-out temperature. We present some results on sixth order cumulants entering the calculation of the QCD equation of state at non-zero values of the baryon chemical potential (mu_B) and discuss limitations on the applicability of HRG thermodynamics deduced from a comparison between QCD and HRG model calculations of cumulants of conserved charge fluctuations. We show that basic features of the $μ_B$-dependence of skewness and kurtosis ratios of net proton-number fluctuations measured by the STAR Collaboration resemble those expected from a O(mu_B^2) QCD calculation of the corresponding net baryon-number cumulant ratios.

hep-lat↗

arXiv2016

Effects of kinematic cuts on net-electric charge fluctuations

The effects of kinematic cuts on electric charge fluctuations in a gas of charged particles are discussed. We consider a very transparent example of an ideal pion gas with quantum statistics, which can be viewed as a multi-component gas of Boltzmann particles with different charges and masses. Cumulants of net-electric charge fluctuations $χ_n^Q$ are calculated in a static and expanding medium with flow parameters adjusted to the experimental data. We show that the transverse momentum cut, $p_{t_\text{min}}\leq p_t\leq p_{t_\text{max}}$, weakens the effects of Bose statistics, i.e. contributions of effectively multi-charged states to higher order moments. Consequently, cuts in $p_t$ modify the experimentally measured cumulants and their ratios. We discuss the influence of kinematic cuts on the ratio of mean and variance of electric charge fluctuations in a hadron resonance gas, in the light of recent data of the STAR and PHENIX Collaborations. We find that the different momentum cuts of $p_{t_\text{min}}=0.2$~GeV (STAR) and $p_{t_\text{min}}=0.3$~GeV (PHENIX) are responsible for more than 30\% of the difference between these two data sets. We argue that the $p_t$ cuts imposed on charged particles will influence the normalized kurtosis {$κ_Qσ_Q^2 = χ_4^Q/χ_2^Q$} of the electric charge fluctuations. In particular, the reduction of $κ_Qσ_Q^2$ with increasing $p_{t_\text{min}}$ will lead to differences between PHENIX and STAR data of ${\cal O}(6\%)$ which currently are buried under large statistical and systematic errors. We furthermore introduce the relation between momentum cut-off and finite volume effects, which is of relevance for the comparison between experimental data and lattice QCD calculations.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2016

The topological structures in strongly coupled QGP with chiral fermions on the lattice

The nature of chiral phase transition for two flavor QCD is an interesting but unresolved problem. One of the most intriguing issues is whether or not the anomalous U(1) symmetry in the flavor sector is effectively restored along with the chiral symmetry. This may determine the universality class of the chiral phase transition. Since the physics near the chiral phase transition is essentially non-perturbative, we employ first principles lattice techniques to address this issue. We use overlap fermions, which have exact chiral symmetry on the lattice, to probe the anomalous U(1) symmetry violation of 2+1 flavor dynamical QCD configurations with domain wall fermions. The latter also optimally preserves chiral and flavor symmetries on the lattice, since it is known that the remnant chiral symmetry of the light quarks influences the scaling of the chiral condensate in the crossover transition region. We observe that the anomalous U(1) is not effectively restored in the chiral crossover region. We perform a systematic study of the finite size and cut-off effects since the signals of U(1) violation are sensitive to it. We also provide a glimpse of the microscopic topological structures of the QCD medium that are responsible for the strongly interacting nature of the quark gluon plasma phase. We study the effect of these microscopic constituents through our first calculations for the topological susceptibility of QCD at finite temperature, which could be a crucial input for the equation of state for anomalous hydrodynamics.

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arXiv2015

The U(1)A anomaly in high temperature QCD with chiral fermions on the lattice

The magnitude of the $U_A(1)$ symmetry breaking is expected to affect the nature of $N_f=2$ QCD chiral phase transition. The explicit breaking of chiral symmetry due to realistic light quark mass is small, so it is important to use chiral fermions on the lattice to understand the effect of $U_A(1)$ near the chiral crossover temperature, $T_c$. We report our latest results for the eigenvalue spectrum of 2+1 flavour QCD with dynamical Mobius domain wall fermions at finite temperature probed using the overlap operator on $32^3\times 8$ lattice. We check how sensitive the low-lying eigenvalues are to the sea-light quark mass. We also present a comparison with the earlier independent results with domain wall fermions.

hep-lat↗

arXiv2015

Thermodynamics of strong-interaction matter from Lattice QCD

We review results from lattice QCD calculations on the thermodynamics of strong-interaction matter with emphasis on input these calculations can provide to the exploration of the phase diagram and properties of hot and dense matter created in heavy ion experiments. This review is organized as follows: 1) Introduction, 2) QCD thermodynamics on the lattice, 3) QCD phase diagram at high temperature, 4) Bulk thermodynamics, 5) Fluctuations of conserved charges, 6) Transport properties, 7) Open heavy flavors and heavy quarkonia, 8) QCD in external magnetic fields, 9) Summary.

hep-lat↗

arXiv2015

In-medium modifications of open and hidden strange-charm mesons from spatial correlation functions

We calculate spatial correlation functions of in-medium mesons consisting of strange--anti-strange, strange--anti-charm and charm--anti-charm quarks in (2+1)-flavor lattice QCD using the highly improved staggered quark action. A comparative study of the in-medium modifications of mesons with different flavor contents is performed. We observe significant in-medium modifications for the $ϕ$ and $D_s$ meson channels already at temperatures around the chiral crossover region. On the other hand, for the $J/ψ$ and $η_c$ meson channels in-medium modifications remain relatively small around the chiral crossover region and become significant only above 1.3 times the chiral crossover temperature.

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arXiv2015

Microscopic Origin of \boldmath{$U_A(1)$} Symmetry Violation in the High Temperature Phase of QCD

We investigate the low-lying eigenmodes of the Dirac matrix with the aim to gain more insight into the temperature dependence of the anomalous $U_A(1)$ symmetry. We use the overlap operator to probe dynamical QCD configurations generated with (2+1)-flavors of highly improved staggered quarks. We find no evidence of a gap opening up in the infrared region of the eigenvalue spectrum even at $1.5\,T_c$, $T_c$ being the chiral crossover temperature. Instead, we observe an accumulation of near-zero eigenmodes. We argue that these near-zero eigenmodes are primarily responsible for the anomalous breaking of the axial symmetry still being effective. At $1.5\,T_c$, these near-zero eigenmodes remain localized and their distribution is consistent with the dilute instanton gas picture. At this temperature, the average size of the instantons is $0.223(8)\,\text{fm}$ and their density is $0.147(7)\,\text{fm}^{-4}$.

hep-lat↗

arXiv2013

Thermodynamics of strong interaction matter from lattice QCD and the hadron resonance gas model

We compare recent lattice QCD calculations of higher order cumulants of net-strangeness fluctuations with hadron resonance gas (HRG) model calculations. Up to the QCD transition temperature Tc=( 154 +/- 9) MeV we find good agreement between QCD and HRG model calculations of second and fourth order cumulants, even when subtle aspects of net-baryon number, strangeness and electric charge fluctuations are probed. In particular, the fourth order cumulants indicate that also in the strangeness sector of QCD the failure of HRG model calculations sets in quite abruptly in the vicinity of the QCD transition temperature and is apparent in most observables for T > 160 MeV.

hep-lat↗

arXiv2013

Investigation of the $U_A(1)$ in high temperature QCD on the lattice

In this project we study the effect of the $U_A(1)$ anomaly for (2+1)-flavour QCD at high temperature. We apply the overlap operator as a tool to probe the topological properties of gauge field configurations which have been generated within the Highly Improved Staggered Quark (HISQ) discretization scheme on lattices of size $32^3\times 8$ with $m_l/m_s=1/20$, commonly used for the study of QCD thermodynamics. Although we have at present, only results for one value of the quark masses and thus cannot monitor the change of the eigenvalue distributions with the light quark mass, the distribution of the low-lying eigenvalues of the overlap operator suggests that the $U_A(1)$ is not restored effectively even at 1.5 times the pseudo critical temperature. The corresponding low-lying eigenmodes show localization properties.

hep-lat↗

arXiv2013

The last word(s) on CPOD 2013

Higher order moments of net conserved charge fluctuations, in particular net baryon number and net electric charge, are sensitive thermodynamic observables that respond strongly to critical behavior in strong interaction matter. In order to use them also as a sensible probe to detect critical behavior in heavy ion experiments we not only need to better understand the relation between chemical freeze-out in heavy ion collision and the QCD phase boundary, we also need to verify that charge fluctuations measured experimentally indeed correspond to thermal conditions as described by equilibrium QCD. This requires a model independent characterization of thermal conditions for which cumulants of conserved charge fluctuations themselves are ideally suited.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2012

Thermal mass and dispersion relations of quarks in the deconfined phase of quenched QCD

Temporal quark correlation functions are analyzed in quenched lattice QCD for two values of temperature above the critical temperature (Tc) for deconfinement, T=1.5Tc and 3Tc. A two-pole ansatz for the quark spectral function is used to determine the bare quark mass and the momentum dependence of excitation spectra on large lattices of size up to 128^3x16. The dependence of the quark correlator on these parameters as well as the finite volume dependence of the excitation energies are analyzed in detail in order to examine the reliability of our analysis. Our results suggest the existence of quasi-particle peaks in the quark spectrum. We furthermore find evidence that the dispersion relation of the plasmino mode has a minimum at non-zero momentum even in the non-perturbative region near Tc. We also elaborate on the enhancement of the quark correlator near the chiral limit which is observed at T=1.5Tc on about half of the gauge configurations. We attribute this to the presence of near zero-modes of the fermion matrix that are associated with non-trivial topology of the gauge configurations.

hep-lat↗

arXiv2012

The scaling functions of the free energy density and its derivatives for the 3d O(4) model

We derive direct representations of the scaling functions of the 3d O(4) model which are relevant for comparisons to other models, in particular QCD. This is done in terms of expansions in the scaling variable z= t/h^{1/Delta}. The expansions around z=0 and the corresponding asymptotic ones for z --> +- infinity overlap such that no interpolation is needed. The expansion coefficients are determined numerically from the data of a previous high statistics simulation of the O(4) model on a three-dimensional lattice of linear extension L=120. From the scaling function of the magnetization we calculate the leading asymptotic coefficients of the scaling function of the free energy density. As a result we obtain the universal amplitude ratio A^+/A^-=1.84(4) for the specific heat. Comparing the scaling function of the energy density to the data we find the non-singular part of the energy density epsilon_{ns}(T) with high precision and at the same time excellent scaling properties.

hep-lat↗

arXiv2012

Determination of Freeze-out Conditions from Lattice QCD Calculations

Freeze-out conditions in Heavy Ion Collisions are generally determined by comparing experimental results for ratios of particle yields with theoretical predictions based on applications of the Hadron Resonance Gas model. We discuss here how this model dependent determination of freeze-out parameters may eventually be replaced by theoretical predictions based on equilibrium QCD thermodynamics.

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