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Lorenz von Smekal

Publications and source records attributed to Lorenz von Smekal.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources
arXiv2018

The low-temperature behavior of the quark-meson model

We revisit the phase diagram of strong-interaction matter for the two-flavor quark-meson model using the Functional Renormalization Group. In contrast to standard mean-field calculations, an unusual phase structure is encountered at low temperatures and large quark chemical potentials. In particular, we identify a regime where the pressure decreases with increasing temperature and discuss possible reasons for this unphysical behavior.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2017

Spectral Functions from the Functional Renormalization Group

We present results for in-medium spectral functions obtained within the Functional Renormalization Group framework. The analytic continuation from imaginary to real time is performed in a well-defined way on the level of the flow equations. Based on this recently developed method, results for the sigma and the pion spectral function for the quark-meson model are shown at finite temperature, finite quark-chemical potential and finite spatial momentum. It is shown how these spectral function become degenreate at high temperatures due to the restoration of chiral symmetry. In addition, results for vector- and axial-vector meson spectral functions are shown using a gauged linear sigma model with quarks. The degeneration of the $ρ$ and the $a_1$ spectral function as well as the behavior of their pole masses is discussed.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2017

A Hybrid-Monte-Carlo study of monolayer graphene with partially screened Coulomb interactions at finite spin density

We report on Hybrid-Monte-Carlo simulations at finite spin density of the $π$-band electrons in monolayer graphene with realistic inter-electron interactions. Unlike simulations at finite charge-carrier density, these are not affected by a fermion-sign problem. Our results are in qualitative agreement with an interaction-induced warping of the Fermi contours, and a reduction of the bandwidth as observed in angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy experiments on charge-doped graphene systems. Furthermore, we find evidence that the neck-disrupting Lifshitz transition, which occurs when the Fermi level traverses the van Hove singularity (VHS), becomes a true quantum phase transition due to interactions. This is in-line with an instability of the VHS towards the formation of electronic ordered phases, which has been predicted by a variety of different theoretical approaches.

cond-mat.str-el↗
arXiv2017

Spectrum of QCD at Finite Isospin Density

We study the phase diagram of QCD at finite isospin density using two flavors of staggered quarks. We investigate the low temperature region of the phase diagram where we find a pion condensation phase at high chemical potential. We started a basic analysis of the spectrum at finite isospin density. In particular, we measured pion, rho and nucleon masses inside and outside of the pion condensation phase. In agreement with previous studies in two-color QCD at finite baryon density we find that the Polyakov loop does not depend on the density in the staggered formulation.

hep-lat↗
arXiv2017

Inter-electron interactions and the RKKY potential between H adatoms in graphene

We use first-principles Quantum Monte-Carlo simulations to study the Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida (RKKY) interaction between hydrogen adatoms attached to a graphene sheet. We find that the pairwise RKKY interactions at distances of a few lattice spacings are strongly affected by inter-electron interactions, in particular, the potential barrier between widely separated adatoms and the dimer configuration becomes wider and thus harder to penetrate. We also point out that anti-ferrromagnetic and charge density wave orderings have very different effects on the RKKY interaction. Finally, we analyze the stability of several regular adatom superlattices with respect to small displacements of a single adatom, distinguishing the cases of adatoms which populate either both or only one sublattice of the graphene lattice.

cond-mat.str-el↗
arXiv2017

What we can learn from two-dimensional QCD-like theories at finite density

We study generic properties of strongly interacting matter at finite density as relevant to heavy-ion collisions at moderate beam energies or the physics of neutron stars and their mergers. Because of the fermion-sign problem in lattice QCD, here we simulate QCD-like theories without this problem at finite density. These theories (two-color QCD, G2-QCD, or adjoint QCD) typically contain bosonic baryons, for example diquarks, or other more exotic states of matter. It is therefore important to understand the effects of such bosonic matter and disentangle them from fermionic baryons where they exist to draw conclusions for QCD. Simulations of these theories, for instance G2-QCD, reveal an interesting and rich phase diagram at zero temperature. Many open questions arise, partly due to the lack of high precision or large volume/continuum data. This is the reason why we study two-dimensional QCD-like theories. In this contribution we shall discuss differences between QCD-like theories at baryon chemical and isospin chemical potential. Furthermore we present simulation results on the phase diagram and spectroscopy at finite density for G2- and two-color-QCD and compare it to free lattice fermions.

hep-lat↗
arXiv2017

Two-colour QCD at finite density with two flavours of staggered quarks

In this contribution we revisit simulations of two-color QCD with rooted staggered quarks at finite density, where baryon-number spontaneously breaks and a diquark condensate forms. We thereby pay special attention to simulating outside the lattice-artifact bulk phase, in which $Z_2$ monopoles condense, and investigate some of the consequences of this, e.g. on the chiral and the diquark condensate which were known to be well described by chiral effective field theory. Not surprisingly, on finer lattices outside the bulk phase the quark condensate now requires additive renormalization before it can be compared with effective field theory predictions. The subtraction must necessarily depend on the chemical potential, however. The diquark condensate is not affected by this problem and remains in good agreement with these predictions. We also compare staggered with Wilson quarks to demonstrate that the two fermion discretizations yield qualitatively different results well below half-filling already. We close with prelimiary results for the Goldstone spectrum to demonstrate that the continuum pattern is recovered also with staggered quarks outside the bulk phase.

hep-lat↗
arXiv2016

Non-Local effective SU(2) Polyakov-loop models from inverse Monte-Carlo methods

The strong-coupling expansion of the lattice gauge action leads to Polyakov-loop models that effectively describe gluodynamics at low temperatures, and together with the hopping expansion of the fermion determinant provides insight into the QCD phase diagram at finite density and low temperatures, although for rather heavy quarks. At higher temperatures the strong-coupling expansion breaks down and it is expected that the interactions between Polyakov loops become non-local. Here, we therefore test how well pure SU(2) gluodynamics can be mapped onto different non-local Polyakov models with inverse Monte-Carlo methods. We take into account Polyakov loops in higher representations and gradually add interaction terms at larger distances. We are particularly interested in extrapolating the range of non-local terms in sufficiently large volumes and higher representations. We study the characteristic fall-off in strength of the non-local couplings with the interaction distance, and its dependence on the gauge coupling in order to compare our results to existing proposals for non-local effective actions.

hep-lat↗
arXiv2016

Competing order in the fermionic Hubbard model on the hexagonal graphene lattice

We study the phase diagram of the fermionic Hubbard model on the hexagonal lattice in the space of on-site and nearest neighbor couplings with Hybrid-Monte-Carlo simulations. With pure on-site repulsion this allows to determine the critical coupling strength for spin-density wave formation with the standard approach of introducing a small mass term, explicitly breaking the sublattice symmetry. The analogous mass term for charge-density wave formation above a critical nearest-neighbor repulsion, on the other hand, would introduce a fermion sign problem. The competition between the two and the phase diagram in the space of the two coouplings can however be studied in simulations without explicit sublattice symmetry breaking. Our results compare qualitatively well with the Hartree-Fock phase diagram. We furthermore demonstrate how spin-symmetry breaking by the Euclidean time discretization can be avoided also, when using an improved fermion action based on an exponetial transfer matrix with exact sublattice symmetry.

hep-lat↗
arXiv2016

In-Medium Spectral Functions of Vector- and Axial-Vector Mesons from the Functional Renormalization Group

In this work we present first results on vector and axial-vector meson spectral functions as obtained by applying the non-perturbative functional renormalization group approach to an effective low-energy theory motivated by the gauged linear sigma model. By using a recently proposed analytic continuation method, we study the in-medium behavior of the spectral functions of the $ρ$ and $a_1$ mesons in different regimes of the phase diagram. In particular, we demonstrate explicitly how these spectral functions degenerate at high temperatures as well as at large chemical potentials, as a consequence of the restoration of chiral symmetry. In addition, we also compute the momentum dependence of the $ρ$ and $a_1$ spectral functions and discuss the various time-like and space-like processes that can occur.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2016

Spectral functions and in-medium properties of hadrons

The in-medium modifications of hadron properties such as masses and decay widths have been a major focus of the scientific work of Gerry Brown and the insights gained by him and his collaborators made them major drivers of this field for several decades. Their prediction of experimental signals in di-lepton pair production in relativistic heavy-ion collisions were instrumental in initiating large experimental campaigns which continue until today. In this chapter we review recent results which elucidate the relation of hadronic spectral properties at finite temperature and density to the restoration of spontaneously broken chiral symmetry.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2016

Effective Polyakov loop models for QCD-like theories at finite chemical potential

We study genuine finite density effects in QCD-like theories with three-dimensional Polyakov-loop effective theories for heavy quarks. These are derived from the full QCD-like theories by combined strong-coupling and hopping expansions. In particular, we investigate the cold and dense regimes of phase diagrams where we expect to find Bose-Einstein-condensation of diquark baryons or a fermionic first-order liquid-gas transition, depending on the gauge group of the theory. In two-color QCD, for example, we observe evidence of a continuous zero-temperature transition to finite diquark density when the quark chemical potential $μ$ reaches half the diquark mass, i.e. without binding energy. In G$_2$-QCD we observe, in addition to this "Silver Blaze" onset of diquark density, a second transition in the density towards an exponential increase by roughly $3μ/T$ corresponding to a finite density of G$_2$-nucleons.

hep-lat↗
arXiv2015

Baryonic Matter Onset in Two-Color QCD with Heavy Quarks

We study the cold and dense regime in the phase diagram of two-color QCD with heavy quarks within a three-dimensional effective theory for Polyakov loops. This theory is derived from two-color QCD in a combined strong-coupling and hopping expansion. In particular, we study the onset of diquark density as the finite-density transition of the bosonic baryons in the two-color world. In contrast to previous studies of heavy dense QCD, our zero-temperature extrapolations are consistent with a continuous transition without binding energy. They thus provide evidence that the effective theory for heavy quarks is capable of describing the characteristic differences between diquark condensation in two-color QCD and the liquid-gas transition of nuclear matter in QCD.

hep-lat↗
arXiv2015

Chiral Mirror-Baryon-Meson Model and Nuclear Matter beyond Mean-Field

We consider a chiral baryon-meson model for nucleons and their parity partners in mirror assignment interacting with pions, sigma and omega mesons to describe the liquid-gas transition of nuclear matter together with chiral symmetry restoration in the high density phase. Within the mean-field approximation the model is known to provide a phenomenologically successful description of the nuclear-matter transition. Here, we go beyond this approximation and include mesonic fluctuations by means of the functional renormalization group. While these fluctuations do not lead to major qualitative changes in the phase diagram of the model, beyond mean-field, one is no-longer free to adjust the parameters so as to reproduce the binding energy per nucleon, the nuclear saturation density, and the nucleon sigma term all at the same time. However, the prediction of a clear first-order chiral transition at low temperatures inside the high baryon-density phase appears to be robust.

nucl-th↗
arXiv2015

Glueballs from the Bethe-Salpeter equation

We formulate a framework to determine the mass of glueball states of Landau gauge Yang-Mills theory in the continuum. To this end we derive a Bethe-Salpeter equation for two gluon bound states including the effects of Faddeev-Popov ghosts. We construct a suitable approximation scheme such that the interactions in the bound state equation match a corresponding successful approximation of the Dyson-Schwinger equations for the Landau gauge ghost and gluon propagators. Based upon a recently obtained solution for the propagators in the complex momentum plane we obtain results for the mass of the scalar and pseudoscalar glueballs. In the scalar channel we find a mass value in agreement with lattice gauge theory.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2015

A Dyson-Schwinger study of the four-gluon vertex

We present a self-consistent calculation of the four-gluon vertex of Landau gauge Yang--Mills theory from a truncated Dyson--Schwinger equation. The equation contains the leading diagrams in the ultraviolet and is solved using as the only input results for lower Green functions from previous Dyson--Schwinger calculations that are in good agreement with lattice data. All quantities are therefore fixed and no higher Green functions enter within this truncation. Our self-consistent solution resolves the full momentum dependence of the vertex but is limited to the tree-level tensor structure at the moment. Calculations of selected dressing functions for other tensor structures from this solution are used to exemplify that they are suppressed compared to the tree-level structure except for possible logarithmic enhancements in the deep infrared. Our results furthermore allow one to extract a qualitative fit for the vertex and a running coupling.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2015

Spectral Functions for the Quark-Meson Model Phase Diagram from the Functional Renormalization Group

We present a method to obtain spectral functions at finite temperature and density from the Functional Renormalization Group. Our method is based on a thermodynamically consistent truncation of the flow equations for 2-point functions with analytically continued frequency components in the originally Euclidean external momenta. For the uniqueness of this continuation at finite temperature we furthermore implement the physical Baym-Mermin boundary conditions. We demonstrate the feasibility of the method by calculating the mesonic spectral functions in the quark-meson model along the temperature axis of the phase diagram, and at finite quark chemical potential along the fixed-temperature line that crosses the critical endpoint of the model.

hep-ph↗