arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Marco Panero.
We study the renormalization of Polyakov loops in different irreducible representations of SU(N) Yang-Mills theories at finite temperature, and investigate their behavior in the large-N limit.
We compute the equation of state in the confining phase of SU(N) Yang-Mills theories with N=2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 colors in 2+1 dimensions, via lattice simulations. At low enough temperatures, the results are accurately described by a gas of glueballs, including all known states below the two-particle threshold. Close to the deconfinement temperature, however, this prediction underestimates the numerical results, and the contribution from heavier glueballs has to be included. We show that the spectral density of the latter can be accurately described using a simple bosonic string model.
We study the behaviour of the interquark potential in lattice gauge theories at high temperature, but still in the confining phase, and propose a new observable which could play in this regime the same role played by the Luscher term in the low temperature limit. This quantity is related to the exponent of the power prefactor in the effective string partition function or, equivalently, to the coefficient of the logarithmic correction in the interquark potential and, as for the usual Luscher term, its value does not depend on the particular gauge group under consideration or on the form of the effective string action used to model the flux tube. In this respect it can be considered as a universal signature of the effective string behaviour of the flux tube. As a test of our proposal we studied this quantity with a set of high-precision numerical simulations in the (2+1) dimensional SU(2), SU(3) and SU(4) Yang-Mills theories and in the Z_2 gauge model, always finding a perfect agreement with the predicted values.
We report the results of a numerical study of staggered overlap fermions, following the construction of Adams which reduces the number of tastes from 4 to 2 without fine-tuning. We study the sensitivity of the operator to the topology of the gauge field, its locality and its robustness to fluctuations of the gauge field. We make a first estimate of the computing cost of a quark propagator calculation, and compare with Neuberger's overlap.
We present Monte Carlo results for the thermodynamics of pure SU(N) gauge theories with $N=2,...,6$ in 2+1 dimensions. We focus on the confined phase region $T<T_c$ and study thermodynamics variables such as the trace of the energy-momentum tensor, pressure, energy and entropy density using the integral method. We also investigate scaling properties with $N$ of the different observables. We compare our results with a gas of free glueballs and the bosonic string predictions for the Hagedorn spectrum.
We present a non-perturbative study of the phase diagram of SU(2) Yang-Mills theory in a five-dimensional spacetime with a compact extra dimension. The non-renormalizable theory is regularized on an anisotropic lattice and investigated through numerical simulations in a regime characterized by a hierarchy between the scale of low-energy physics, the inverse compactification radius, and the cutoff scale. We map out the structure of the phase diagram and the pattern of lines corresponding to fixed values of the ratio between the mass of the fifth component of the gauge field and the non-perturbative mass gap of the four-dimensional modes. We discuss different limits of the model, and comment on the implications of our findings.
We report on our recent study of equilibrium thermodynamic observables in SU(N) gauge theories with N=3, 4, 5, 6 and 8 colors at temperatures T in the range from 0.8 T_c to 3.4 T_c (where T_c denotes the critical deconfinement temperature). The results, which show a very weak dependence on the number of colors, are compared with gauge/gravity models of the QCD plasma, including the improved holographic QCD model proposed by Kiritsis and collaborators, and with the supergravity prediction for the entropy density deficit. Furthermore, we investigate the possibility that the trace anomaly may receive contributions proportional to T^2 at temperatures close to T_c. Finally, we present the extrapolated results for the pressure, trace anomaly, energy and entropy densities in the limit for N going to infinity.
The equilibrium thermodynamic properties of the SU(N) plasma at finite temperature are studied non-perturbatively in the large-N limit, via lattice simulations. We present high-precision numerical results for the pressure, trace of the energy-momentum tensor, energy density and entropy density of SU(N) Yang-Mills theories with N=3, 4, 5, 6 and 8 colors, in a temperature range from 0.8T_c to 3.4T_c (where T_c denotes the critical deconfinement temperature). The results, normalized according to the number of gluons, show a very mild dependence on N, supporting the idea that the dynamics of the strongly-interacting QCD plasma could admit a description based on large-N models. We compare our numerical data with general expectations about the thermal behavior of the deconfined gluon plasma and with various theoretical descriptions, including, in particular, the improved holographic QCD model recently proposed by Kiritsis and collaborators. We also comment on the relevance of an AdS/CFT description for the QCD plasma in a phenomenologically interesting temperature range where the system, while still strongly-coupled, approaches a `quasi-conformal' regime characterized by approximate scale invariance. Finally, we perform an extrapolation of our results to the N to $\infty$ limit.
I present a study of the equation of state in quenched QCD, discussing some systematic effects related to the lattice geometry. In particular, I comment on the modification of the Stefan-Boltzmann law for a gas of free gluons in a finite system, and study the impact it might have on numerical results at high temperatures, for the typical parameters of current lattice simulations. Finally, I apply the results of this study to the analysis of data obtained from simulations of SU(N) gauge theories with N>3 colors, in a temperature range up to 3T_c, where infrared effects appear to be under control. Preliminary results for various thermodynamic observables for SU(4), SU(5) and SU(6) gauge theories are found to be close to each other and to those for SU(3), in agreement with other similar studies. This may be relevant for the theoretical description of the QCD plasma.
In quenched QCD, where the dynamic creation of quark-antiquark pairs out of the vacuum is neglected, a confined baryonic system composed of three static quarks exhibits string-like behaviour at large interquark separation, with the formation of flux tubes characterized by the geometry of the so-called Y ansatz. We study the fluctuations of the junction of the three flux tubes, assuming the dynamics to be governed by an effective bosonic string model. We show that the asymptotic behaviour of the effective width of the junction grows logarithmically with the distance between the sources, with the coefficient depending on the number of joining strings, on the dimension of spacetime and on the string tension.
We study the spectrum of the staggered Dirac operator in SU(2) gauge fields close to the free limit, for both the fundamental and the adjoint representation. Numerically we find a characteristic cluster structure with spacings of adjacent levels separating into three scales. We derive an analytical formula which explains the emergence of these different spectral scales. The behavior on the two coarser scales is determined by the lattice geometry and the Polyakov loops, respectively. Furthermore, we analyze the spectral statistics on all three scales, comparing to predictions from random matrix theory.
We present a numerical study about the confining regime of compact U(1) lattice gauge theory in 4D. To address the problem, we exploit the duality properties of the theory. The main features of this method are presented, and its possible advantages and limits with respect to alternative techniques are briefly discussed. In Monte Carlo simulations, we focus our attention onto the case when a pair of static external charges is present. Some results are shown, concerning different observables which are of interest in order to understand the confinement mechanism, like the profile of the electric field induced by the static charges, and the ratios between Polyakov loop correlation functions at different distances.
We consider the spectrum of the staggered Dirac operator with SU(2) gauge fields. Our study is motivated by the fact that the antiunitary symmetries of this operator are different from those of the SU(2) continuum Dirac operator. In this contribution, we investigate in some detail staggered eigenvalue spectra close to the free limit. Numerical experiments in the quenched approximation and at very large $β$-values show that the eigenvalues occur in clusters consisting of eight eigenvalues each. We can predict the locations of these clusters for a given configuration very accurately by an analytical formula involving Polyakov loops and boundary conditions. The spacing distribution of the eigenvalues within the clusters agrees with the chiral symplectic ensemble of random matrix theory, in agreement with theoretical expectations, whereas the spacing distribution between the clusters tends towards Poisson behavior.
We provide accurate Monte Carlo results for the free energy of interfaces with periodic boundary conditions in the 3D Ising model. We study a large range of inverse temperatures, allowing to control corrections to scaling. In addition to square interfaces, we study rectangular interfaces for a large range of aspect ratios u=L_1/L_2. Our numerical results are compared with predictions of effective interface models. This comparison verifies clearly the effective Nambu-Goto model up to two-loop order. Our data also allow us to obtain the estimates T_c sigma^-1/2=1.235(2), m_0++ sigma^-1/2=3.037(16) and R_+=f_+^2 sigma_0 =0.387(2), which are more precise than previous ones.
We address a detailed non-perturbative numerical study of the scalar theory on the fuzzy sphere. We use a novel algorithm which strongly reduces the correlation problems in the matrix update process, and allows the investigation of different regimes of the model in a precise and reliable way. We study the modes associated to different momenta and the role they play in the ``striped phase'', pointing out a consistent interpretation which is corroborated by our data, and which sheds further light on the results obtained in some previous works. Next, we test a quantitative, non-trivial theoretical prediction for this model, which has been formulated in the literature: The existence of an eigenvalue sector characterised by a precise probability density, and the emergence of the phase transition associated with the opening of a gap around the origin in the eigenvalue distribution. The theoretical predictions are confirmed by our numerical results. Finally, we propose a possible method to detect numerically the non-commutative anomaly predicted in a one-loop perturbative analysis of the model, which is expected to induce a distortion of the dispersion relation on the fuzzy sphere.
We review some recent progress in quantum field theory in non-commutative space, focusing onto the fuzzy sphere as a non-perturbative regularisation scheme. We first introduce the basic formalism, and discuss the limits corresponding to different commutative or non-commutative spaces. We present some of the theories which have been investigated in this framework, with a particular attention to the scalar model. Then we comment on the results recently obtained from Monte Carlo simulations, and show a preview of new numerical data, which are consistent with the expected transition between two phases characterised by the topology of the support of a matrix eigenvalue distribution.
We study noncommutative field theories, which are inherently nonlocal, using a Poincaré-invariant regularisation scheme which yields an effective, nonlocal theory for energies below a cut-off scale. After discussing the general features and the peculiar advantages of this regularisation scheme for theories defined in noncommutative spaces, we focus our attention onto the particular case when the noncommutativity parameter is inversely proportional to the square of the cut-off, via a dimensionless parameter $η$. We work out the perturbative corrections at one-loop order for a scalar theory with quartic interactions, where the signature of noncommutativity appears in $η$-dependent terms. The implications of this approach, which avoids the problems related to UV-IR mixing, are discussed from the perspective of the Wilson renormalisation program. Finally, we remark about the generality of the method, arguing that it may lead to phenomenologically relevant predictions, when applied to realistic field theories.
Motivated by the recent progress in the effective string description of the interquark potential in lattice gauge theory, we study interfaces with periodic boundary conditions in the three-dimensional Ising model. Our Monte Carlo results for the associated free energy are compared with the next-to-leading order (NLO) approximation of the Nambu-Goto string model. We find clear evidence for the validity of the effective string model at the level of the NLO truncation.