arXiv subjects

Y. Burnier

Publications and source records attributed to Y. Burnier.

18 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2017

Thermal quarkonium physics in the pseudoscalar channel

The pseudoscalar correlator is an ideal lattice probe for thermal modifications to quarkonium spectra, given that it is not compromised by a contribution from a large transport peak. We construct a perturbative spectral function incorporating resummed thermal effects around the threshold and vacuum asymptotics above the threshold, and compare the corresponding imaginary-time correlators with continuum-extrapolated lattice data for quenched SU(3) at several temperatures. Modest differences are observed, which may originate from non-perturbative mass shifts or renormalization factors, however no resonance peaks are needed for describing the quenched lattice data for charmonium at and above T ~ 1.1Tc ~ 350 MeV. For comparison, in the bottomonium case a good description of the lattice data is obtained with a spectral function containing a single thermally broadened resonance peak.

hep-lat↗

arXiv2014

Lattice calculation of the heavy quark potential at non-zero temperature

We calculated the real and imaginary parts of the static quark anti-quark potential at T>0 in 2+1 flavor QCD using correlators of Wilson lines in Coulomb gauge and lattices with temporal extent N_tau=12. We find that the real part of the potential is larger than the singlet free energy but smaller than the zero temperature potential. The imaginary part of the potential is similar in size to the perturbative HTL result.

hep-lat↗

arXiv2013

Charm mass effects in bulk channel correlations

The bulk viscosity of thermalized QCD matter at temperatures above a few hundred MeV could be significantly influenced by charm quarks because their contribution arises four perturbative orders before purely gluonic effects. In an attempt to clarify the challenges of a lattice study, we determine the relevant imaginary-time correlator (of massive scalar densities) up to NLO in perturbation theory, and compare with existing data. We find discrepancies much larger than in the vector channel; this may hint, apart from the importance of taking a continuum limit, to larger non-perturbative effects in the scalar channel. We also recall how a transport peak related to the scalar density spectral function encodes non-perturbative information concerning the charm quark chemical equilibration rate close to equilibrium.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2013

Temporal mesonic correlators at NLO for any quark mass

We present NLO results for thermal imaginary-time correlators in the vector and scalar channels as a function of the quark mass. The range of quark masses for which a non-relativistic approximation works in the temperature range considered is estimated, and charm quarks turn out to be a borderline case. Comparing with simulation data from fine lattices, we find good agreement in the vector channel but a substantial discrepancy in the scalar one. An explanation for the discrepancy is suggested in terms of physics of the quark-antiquark threshold region. Perturbative predictions for the bottom scalar spectral function around the threshold are also briefly reviewed.

hep-lat↗

arXiv2013

Dimensionally regularized Polyakov loop correlators in hot QCD

A popular observable in finite-temperature lattice QCD is the so-called singlet quark-antiquark free energy, conventionally defined in Coulomb gauge. In an effort to interpret the existing numerical data on this observable, we compute it at order O(alpha_s^2) in continuum, and analyze the result at various distance scales. At short distances (r << 1/pi T) the behaviour matches that of the gauge-independent zero-temperature potential; on the other hand at large distances (r >> 1/pi T) the singlet free energy appears to have a gauge-fixing related power-law tail. At infinite distance the result again becomes physical in the sense that it goes over to a gauge-independent disconnected contribution, the square of the expectation value of the trace of the Polyakov loop; we recompute this quantity at O(alpha_s^2), finding for pure SU(Nc) a different non-logarithmic term than in previous literature, and adding for full QCD the quark contribution. We also discuss the value of the singlet free energy in a general covariant gauge, as well as the behaviour of the cyclic Wilson loop that is obtained if the singlet free energy is made gauge-independent by inserting straight spacelike Wilson lines into the observable. Comparisons with lattice data are carried out where possible.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2012

Massive vector current correlator in thermal QCD

We present an NLO analysis of the massive vector current correlator at temperatures above a few hundred MeV. The physics of this correlator originates from a transport peak, related to heavy quark diffusion, and from the quark-antiquark threshold, related to quarkonium physics. In the bottom case both can be studied with separate effective theories, but for charm these may not be accurate, so a study within the full theory is needed. Working in imaginary time, the NLO correlator can be computed in unresummed perturbation theory; comparing with lattice data, we find good agreement. Subsequently we inspect how non-perturbative modifications of the transport peak would affect the imaginary-time correlator. The massive NLO quark-number susceptibility is also contrasted with numerical measurement.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2012

From the chiral magnetic wave to the charge dependence of elliptic flow

The quark-gluon plasma formed in heavy ion collisions contains charged chiral fermions evolving in an external magnetic field. At finite density of electric charge or baryon number (resulting either from nuclear stopping or from fluctuations), the triangle anomaly induces in the plasma the Chiral Magnetic Wave (CMW). The CMW first induces a separation of the right and left chiral charges along the magnetic field; the resulting dipolar axial charge density in turn induces the oppositely directed vector charge currents leading to an electric quadrupole moment of the quark-gluon plasma. Boosted by the strong collective flow, the electric quadrupole moment translates into the charge dependence of the elliptic flow coefficients, so that $v_2(π^+) < v_2(π^-)$ (at positive net charge). Using the latest quantitative simulations of the produced magnetic field and solving the CMW equation, we make further quantitative estimates of the produced $v_2$ splitting and its centrality dependence. We compare the results with the available experimental data.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2012

Towards flavour diffusion coefficient and electrical conductivity without ultraviolet contamination

By subtracting from a recent lattice measurement of the thermal vector-current correlator the known 5-loop vacuum contribution, we demonstrate that the remainder is small and shows no visible short-distance divergence. It can therefore in principle be subjected to model-independent analytic continuation. Testing a particular implementation, we obtain estimates for the flavour-diffusion coefficient (2 pi T D \gsim 0.8) and electrical conductivity which are significantly smaller than previous results. Although systematic errors remain beyond control at present, some aspects of our approach could be of a wider applicability.

hep-lat↗

arXiv2011

A test on analytic continuation of thermal imaginary-time data

Some time ago, Cuniberti et al have proposed a novel method for analytically continuing thermal imaginary-time correlators to real time, which requires no model input and should be applicable with finite-precision data as well. Given that these assertions go against common wisdom, we report on a naive test of the method with an idealized example. We do encounter two problems, which we spell out in detail; this implies that systematic errors are difficult to quantify. On a more positive note, the method is simple to implement and allows for an empirical recipe by which a reasonable qualitative estimate for some transport coefficient may be obtained, if statistical errors of an ultraviolet-subtracted imaginary-time measurement can be reduced to roughly below the per mille level.

hep-lat↗

arXiv2010

Colour-electric spectral function at next-to-leading order

The spectral function related to the correlator of two colour-electric fields along a Polyakov loop determines the momentum diffusion coefficient of a heavy quark near rest with respect to a heat bath. We compute this spectral function at next-to-leading order, O(alpha_s^2), in the weak-coupling expansion. The high-frequency part of our result (omega >> T), which is shown to be temperature-independent, is accurately determined thanks to asymptotic freedom; the low-frequency part of our result (omega << T), in which Hard Thermal Loop resummation is needed in order to cure infrared divergences, agrees with a previously determined expression. Our result may help to calibrate the overall normalization of a lattice-extracted spectral function in a perturbative frequency domain T << omega << 1/a, paving the way for a non-perturbative estimate of the momentum diffusion coefficient at omega -> 0. We also evaluate the colour-electric Euclidean correlator, which could be directly compared with lattice simulations. As an aside we determine the Euclidean correlator in the lattice strong-coupling expansion, showing that through a limiting procedure it can in principle be defined also in the confined phase of pure Yang-Mills theory, even if a practical measurement could be very noisy there.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2009

Compact extra-dimensions as solution to the strong CP problem

We show that the strong CP problem can, in principle, be solved dynamically by adding extra-dimensions with compact topology. To this aim we consider a toy model for QCD, which contains a vacuum angle and a strong CP like problem. We further consider a higher dimensional theory, which has a trivial vacuum structure and which reproduces the perturbative properties of the toy model in the low-energy limit. In the weak coupling regime, where our computations are valid, we show that the vacuum structure of the low-energy action is still trivial and the strong CP problem is solved. No axion-like particle occur in this setup and therefore it is not ruled out by astrophysical bounds.

hep-th↗

arXiv2009

Effective action of a five-dimensional domain wall

We calculate the four-dimensional low-energy effective action for the perturbations of a two-scalar domain wall model in five dimensions. Comparison of the effective action to the Nambu-Goto action reveals the presence of an additional coupling between the light scalar field and the massless translation mode (branon excitation), which can be written in terms of the curvature scalar of the induced metric. We comment on the impact of this interaction to branon physics.

hep-th↗

arXiv2009

Quarkonium dissociation in the presence of a small momentum space anisotropy

We consider the dissociation of heavy quarkonium in a medium close to thermal equilibrium but with a small momentum space anisotropy. Dissociation is defined to take place when the width of the ground state equals its binding energy. We show that if the anisotropic medium is obtained isentropically from the equilibrium one, then to first order in the anisotropy parameter the dissociation temperature remains unchanged. If, in contrast, the non-equilibrium system has a smaller entropy density than the equilibrium one, then the dissociation temperature increases with respect to the isotropic case, by up to 10% for modest anisotropies.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2009

Heavy quark medium polarization at next-to-leading order

We compute the imaginary part of the heavy quark contribution to the photon polarization tensor, i.e. the quarkonium spectral function in the vector channel, at next-to-leading order in thermal QCD. Matching our result, which is valid sufficiently far away from the two-quark threshold, with a previously determined resummed expression, which is valid close to the threshold, we obtain a phenomenological estimate for the spectral function valid for all non-zero energies. In particular, the new expression allows to fix the overall normalization of the previous resummed one. Our result may be helpful for lattice reconstructions of the spectral function (near the continuum limit), which necessitate its high energy behaviour as input, and can in principle also be compared with the dilepton production rate measured in heavy ion collision experiments. In an appendix analogous results are given for the scalar channel.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2008

Heavy quarkonium in any channel in resummed hot QCD

We elaborate on the fact that quarkonium in hot QCD should not be thought of as a stationary bound state in a temperature-dependent real potential, but as a short-lived transient, with an exponentially decaying wave function. The reason is the existence of an imaginary part in the pertinent static potential, signalling the ``disappearance'', due to inelastic scatterings with hard particles in the plasma, of the off-shell gluons that bind the quarks together. By solving the corresponding Schrödinger equation, we estimate numerically the near-threshold spectral functions in scalar, pseudoscalar, vector and axial vector channels, as a function of the temperature and of the heavy quark mass. In particular, we point out a subtlety in the determination of the scalar channel spectral function and, resolving it to the best of our understanding, suggest that at least in the bottomonium case, a resonance peak can be observed also in the scalar channel, even though it is strongly suppressed with respect to the peak in the vector channel. Finally, we plot the physical dilepton production rate, stressing that despite the eventual disappearance of the resonance peak from the corresponding spectral function, the quarkonium contribution to the dilepton rate becomes more pronounced with increasing temperature, because of the yield from free heavy quarks.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2006

Baryon and lepton number violation rates across the electroweak crossover

We point out that the results of many baryogenesis scenarios operating at or below the TeV scale are rather sensitive to the rate of anomalous fermion number violation across the electroweak crossover. Assuming the validity of the Standard Model of electroweak interactions, and making use of previous theoretical work at small Higgs masses, we estimate this rate for experimentally allowed values of the Higgs mass (m_H = 100 ... 300 GeV). We also elaborate on how the rate makes its appearance in (leptogenesis based) baryogenesis computations.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2005

Can an odd number of fermions be created due to chiral anomaly?

We describe a possibility of creation of an odd number of fractionally charged fermions in 1+1 dimensional Abelian Higgs model. We point out that for 1+1 dimensions this process does not violate any symmetries of the theory, nor makes it mathematically inconsistent. We construct the proper definition of the fermionic determinant in this model and underline its non-trivial features that are of importance for realistic 3+1 dimensional models with fermion number violation.

hep-th↗

arXiv2005

One-loop fermionic corrections to the instanton transition in two dimensional chiral Higgs model

The one-loop fermionic contribution to the probability of an instanton transition with fermion number violation is calculated in the chiral Abelian Higgs model in 1+1 dimensions, where the fermions have a Yukawa coupling to the scalar field. The dependence of the determinant on fermionic, scalar and vector mass is determined. We show in detail how to renormalize the fermionic determinant in partial wave analysis, which is convenient for computations.

hep-ph↗