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Y. Maezawa

Publications and source records attributed to Y. Maezawa.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2017

The QCD Equation of State to $\mathcal{O}(μ_B^6)$ from Lattice QCD

We calculated the QCD equation of state using Taylor expansions that include contributions from up to sixth order in the baryon, strangeness and electric charge chemical potentials. Calculations have been performed with the Highly Improved Staggered Quark action in the temperature range $T\in [135~{\rm MeV}, 330~{\rm MeV}]$ using up to four different sets of lattice cut-offs corresponding to lattices of size $N_σ^3\times N_τ$ with aspect ratio $N_σ/N_τ=4$ and $N_τ=6-16$. The strange quark mass is tuned to its physical value and we use two strange to light quark mass ratios $m_s/m_l=20$ and $27$, which in the continuum limit correspond to a pion mass of about $160$ MeV and $140$ MeV espectively. Sixth-order results for Taylor expansion coefficients are used to estimate truncation errors of the fourth-order expansion. We show that truncation errors are small for baryon chemical potentials less then twice the temperature ($μ_B\le 2T$). The fourth-order equation of state thus is suitable for the modeling of dense matter created in heavy ion collisions with center-of-mass energies down to $\sqrt{s_{NN}}\sim 12$ GeV. We provide a parametrization of basic thermodynamic quantities that can be readily used in hydrodynamic simulation codes. The results on up to sixth order expansion coefficients of bulk thermodynamics are used for the calculation of lines of constant pressure, energy and entropy densities in the $T$-$μ_B$ plane and are compared with the crossover line for the QCD chiral transition as well as with experimental results on freeze-out parameters in heavy ion collisions. These coefficients also provide estimates for the location of a possible critical point. We argue that results on sixth order expansion coefficients disfavor the existence of a critical point in the QCD phase diagram for $μ_B/T\le 2$ and $T/T_c(μ_B=0) > 0.9$.

hep-lat↗
arXiv2016

Quark masses and strong coupling constant in 2+1 flavor QCD

We present a determination of the strange, charm and bottom quark masses as well as the strong coupling constant in 2+1 flavor lattice QCD simulations using highly improved staggered quark action. The ratios of the charm quark mass to the strange quark mass and the bottom quark mass to the charm quark mass are obtained from the meson masses calculated on the lattice and found to be $m_c/m_s=11.871(91)$ and $m_b/m_c=4.528(57)$ in the continuum limit. We also determine the strong coupling constant and the charm quark mass using the moments of pseudoscalar charmonium correlators: $α_s(μ=m_c)=0.3697(85)$ and $m_c(μ=m_c)=1.267(12)$ GeV. Our result for $α_s$ corresponds to the determination of the strong coupling constant at the lowest energy scale so far and is translated to the value $α_s(μ=M_Z,n_f=5)=0.11622(84)$.

hep-lat↗
arXiv2014

The melting and abundance of open charm hadrons

Ratios of cumulants of conserved net charge fluctuations are sensitive to the degrees of freedom that are carriers of the corresponding quantum numbers in different phases of strong interaction matter. Using lattice QCD with 2+1 dynamical flavors and quenched charm quarks we calculate second and fourth order cumulants of net charm fluctuations and their correlations with other conserved charges such as net baryon number, electric charge and strangeness. Analyzing appropriate ratios of these cumulants we probe the nature of charmed degrees of freedom in the vicinity of the QCD chiral crossover region. We show that for temperatures above the chiral crossover transition temperature, charmed degrees of freedom can no longer be described by an uncorrelated gas of hadrons. This suggests that the dissociation of open charm hadrons and the emergence of deconfined charm states sets in just near the chiral crossover transition. Till the crossover region we compare these lattice QCD results with two hadron resonance gas models --including only the experimentally established charmed resonances and also including additional states predicted by quark model and lattice QCD calculations. This comparison provides evidence for so far unobserved charmed hadrons that contribute to the thermodynamics in the crossover region.

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arXiv2014

Additional Strange Hadrons from QCD Thermodynamics and Strangeness Freeze-out in Heavy Ion Collisions

We compare lattice QCD results for appropriate combinations of net strangeness fluctuations and their correlations with net baryon number fluctuations with predictions from two hadron resonance gas (HRG) models having different strange hadron content. The conventionally used HRG model based on experimentally established strange hadrons fails to describe the lattice QCD results in the hadronic phase close to the QCD crossover. Supplementing the conventional HRG with additional, experimentally uncharted strange hadrons predicted by quark model calculations and observed in lattice QCD spectrum calculations leads to good descriptions of strange hadron thermodynamics below the QCD crossover. We show that the thermodynamic presence of these additional states gets imprinted in the yields of the ground-state strange hadrons leading to a systematic 5--8 MeV decrease of the chemical freeze-out temperatures of ground-state strange baryons.

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arXiv2013

Scaling properties of the chiral phase transition in the low density region of two-flavor QCD with improved Wilson fermions

We study scaling behavior of a chiral order parameter in the low density region, performing a simulation of two-flavor QCD with improved Wilson quarks. The scaling behavior of the chiral order parameter defined by a Ward-Takahashi identity agrees with the scaling function of the three-dimensional O(4) spin model at zero chemical potential. We extend the scaling study to finite density QCD. Applying the reweighting method and calculating derivatives of the chiral order parameter with respect to the chemical potential, the scaling properties of the chiral phase transition are discussed in the low density region. We moreover calculate the curvature of the phase boundary of the chiral phase transition in the temperature and chemical potential plane assuming the O(4) scaling relation.

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arXiv2013

Meson screening masses at finite temperature with Highly Improved Staggered Quarks

We report on the first study of the screening properties of the mesonic excitations with strange ($s$) and charm ($c$) quarks, specifically the ground states of the pseudo-scalar and vector meson excitations for the $\bar{s}s$, $\bar{s}c$ and $\bar{c}c$ flavor combinations, using the Highly Improved Staggered Quark action with dynamical physical strange quark and nearly-physical up and down quarks. By comparing with their respective vacuum meson masses and by investigating the influence of the changing temporal boundary conditions of the valence quarks we study the thermal modifications of these mesonic excitations. While the $\bar{s}s$ states show significant modifications even below the chiral crossover temperature $T_c$, the modifications of the open-charm and charmonium like states become visible only for temperatures $T\gtrsim T_c$ and $T\gtrsim1.2T_c$, respectively.

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arXiv2013

Chiral phase transition of $N_f$=2+1 QCD with the HISQ action

We present studies of universal properties of the chiral phase transition in $N_f$=2+1 QCD based on the simulations using Highly Improved Staggered fermions on lattices with temporal extent $N_τ$=6. We analyze the quark mass and volume dependence of the chiral condensates and chiral susceptibilities in QCD with two degenerate light quarks and a strange quark. The strange quark mass is chosen to be fixed to its physical value ($m^{phy}_s$) and five values of light quark masses ($m_l$) that are varied in the interval 1/20$\gtrsim m_l/m^{phy}_s \gtrsim$1/80. Here various quark masses correspond to pseudo Goldstone pion masses ranging from about 160 MeV to about 80 MeV. The O(N) scaling of chiral observables and the influence of universal scaling on physical observables in the region of physical quark mass values are also discussed.

hep-lat↗
arXiv2013

Strangeness at high temperatures: from hadrons to quarks

Appropriate combinations of up to fourth order cumulants of net strangeness fluctuations and their correlations with net baryon number and electric charge fluctuations, obtained from lattice QCD calculations, have been used to probe the strangeness carrying degrees of freedom at high temperatures. For temperatures up to the chiral crossover separate contributions of strange mesons and baryons can be well described by an uncorrelated gas of hadrons. Such a description breaks down in the chiral crossover region, suggesting that the deconfinement of strangeness takes place at the chiral crossover. On the other hand, the strangeness carrying degrees of freedom inside the quark gluon plasma can be described by a weakly interacting gas of quarks only for temperatures larger than twice the chiral crossover temperature. In the intermediate temperature window these observables show considerably richer structures, indicative of the strongly interacting nature of the quark gluon plasma.

hep-lat↗
arXiv2012

Application of fixed scale approach to static quark free energies in quenched and 2+1 flavor lattice QCD with improved Wilson quark action

Free energies between static quarks and Debye screening masses in the quark-gluon plasma are studied on the basis of Polyakov-line correlations in lattice simulations of 2+1 flavors QCD with the renormalization-group improved gluon action and the $O(a)$-improved Wilson quark action. We perform simulations at $m_{\rm PS}/m_{\rm V} = 0.63$ (0.74) for light (strange) flavors with lattice sizes of $32^3 \times N_t$ with $N_t=4$--12. We adopt the fixed-scale approach, where temperature can be varied without changing the spatial volume and renormalization factor. We find that, at short distance, the free energies of static quarks in color-singlet channel converge to the static-quark potential evaluated from the Wilson-loop at zero-temperature, in accordance with the expected insensitivity of short distance physics to the temperature. At long distance, the free energies of static quarks approach to twice the single-quark free energies, implying that the interaction between static quarks is fully screened. The screening properties can be well described by the screened Coulomb form with appropriate Casimir factor at high temperature. We also discuss a limitation of the fixed-scale approach at high temperature.

hep-lat↗
arXiv2012

Equation of state in 2+1 flavor QCD with improved Wilson quarks by the fixed scale approach

We study the equation of state in 2+1 flavor QCD with nonperturbatively improved Wilson quarks coupled with the RG-improved Iwasaki glue. We apply the $T$-integration method to nonperturbatively calculate the equation of state by the fixed-scale approach. With the fixed-scale approach, we can purely vary the temperature on a line of constant physics without changing the system size and renormalization constants. Unlike the conventional fixed-$N_t$ approach, it is easy to keep scaling violations small at low temperature in the fixed scale approach. We study 2+1 flavor QCD at light quark mass corresponding to $m_π/m_ρ\simeq 0.63$, while the strange quark mass is chosen around the physical point. Although the light quark masses are heavier than the physical values yet, our equation of state is roughly consistent with recent results with highly improved staggered quarks at large $N_t$.

hep-lat↗
arXiv2012

Phase structure of finite temperature QCD in the heavy quark region

We study the quark mass dependence of the finite temperature QCD phase transition in the heavy quark region using an effective potential defined through the probability distribution function of the average plaquette. Performing a simulation of SU(3) pure gauge theory, we first confirm that the distribution function has two peaks indicating that the phase transition is of first order in the heavy quark limit, while the first order transition turns into a crossover as the quark mass decreases from infinity, where the mass dependence of the distribution function is evaluated by the reweighting method combined with the hopping parameter expansion. We determine the endpoint of the first order transition region for N_f=1, 2, 3 and 2+1 cases. The quark mass dependence of the latent heat is also evaluated in the first order transition region.

hep-lat↗
arXiv2011

Charmonium spectral functions with the variational method in zero and finite temperature lattice QCD

We propose a method to evaluate spectral functions on the lattice based on a variational method. On a lattice with a finite spatial extent, spectral functions consist of discrete spectra only. Adopting a variational method, we calculate the locations and the heights of spectral functions at low-lying discrete spectra. We first test the method in the case of analytically solvable free Wilson quarks at zero and finite temperatures and confirm that the method well reproduces the analytic results for low-lying spectra. We find that we can systematically improve the results by increasing the number of trial states. We then apply the method to calculate the charmonium spectral functions for S and P-wave states at zero-temperature in quenched QCD and compare the results with those obtained using the conventional maximum entropy method (MEM). The results for the ground state are consistent with the location and the area of the first peak in spectral functions from the MEM, while the variational method leads to a mass which is closer to the experimental value for the first excited state. We also investigate the temperature dependence of the spectral functions for S-wave states below and above $T_c$. We obtain no clear evidences for dissociation of $J/ψ$ and $η_c$ up to 1.4$T_c$.

hep-lat↗
arXiv2011

Scaling behavior of chiral phase transition in two-flavor QCD with improved Wilson quarks at finite density

We study scaling behavior of a chiral order parameter performing a simulation of two-flavor QCD with improved Wilson quarks. It has been shown that the scaling behavior of the chiral order parameter defined by a Ward-Takahashi identity agrees with the scaling function of the three-dimensional O(4) spin model at zero chemical potential. We extend the scaling study to finite density QCD. Calculating derivatives of the chiral order parameter with respect to the chemical potential in two-flavor QCD, the scaling property of chiral phase transition is discussed in the low density region. We moreover calculate the curvature of the phase boundary of the chirl phase transition in the temperature and chemical potential plane assuming the O(4) scaling relation.

hep-lat↗
arXiv2010

The order of the deconfinement phase transition in a heavy quark mass region

We study the quark mass dependence of the QCD phase transition by an effective potential defined through the distribution function of observables. As a test of the method, we study the first order deconfinement phase transition in the heavy quark mass limit and its fate at lighter quark masses. We confirm that the distribution function for the plaquette has two peaks indicating that the phase transition is of first order in the heavy quark limit. We then study the quark mass dependence of the distribution function by a reweighting method combined with the hopping parameter expansion. We find that the first order transition turns into a crossover as the quark mass decreases. We determine the critical point for the cases of $N_f$=1, 2, 3 and 2+1. We find that the probability distribution function provides us with a powerful tool to study the order of transitions.

hep-lat↗
arXiv2010

An application of the variational analysis to calculate the meson spectral functions

We present a new method to calculate meson spectral functions (SPFs) on the lattice based on a variational method. Because, on a finite volume lattice, the meson SPFs have discrete spectra only, a suitable way to extract such discrete signals is needed. Using a variational method, we can calculate several discrete quantities such as the position and the area of spectral peaks for low-lying states. Moreover data accuracy can be improved by increasing the number of basis functions. In this report, we first confirm our method in the free quark case and show that our method works well. Then, we apply the method to a quenched lattice QCD simulation and calculate the charmonium SPFs for S and P-waves at zero temperature. Our results for the ground state are well consistent with the position and the area of the lowest peaks of charmonium SPFs calculated by the conventional maximum entropy method. For first excited states, the signals may be reliablly extracted with our method because the charmonium mass converges to a value close to the experimental one when the number of basis functions is increased. We also investigate the SPFs for S-wave charmonia at below and above $T_c$. Our results suggest that $J/ψ$ and $η_c$ may survive up to 1.4$T_c$.

hep-lat↗
arXiv2010

QCD thermodynamics at zero and finite densities with improved Wilson quarks

The WHOT-QCD Collaboration is pushing forward lattice studies of QCD at finite temperatures and densities using improved Wilson quarks. We first present results on QCD at zero and finite densities with two flavors of degenerate quarks (N_F=2 QCD) adopting the conventional fixed-Nt approach. We then report on the status of a study of N_F=2+1 QCD adopting a fixed-scale approach armed with the T-integration method which we have developed.

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