The QCD transition temperature: results with physical masses in the continuum limit II.

TL;DR

This study refines the determination of the QCD transition temperature using physical quark masses and finer lattices, confirming previous results and ensuring consistency across multiple scale-setting methods.

Contribution

It provides an improved, more precise calculation of the QCD transition temperature with physical masses and continuum limit extrapolation, validating earlier findings.

Findings

Transition temperature confirmed with high precision.

Multiple scale-setting methods yield consistent results.

Results agree with the 'hotQCD' collaboration.

Abstract

We extend our previous study [Phys. Lett. B643 (2006) 46] of the cross-over temperatures (T_c) of QCD. We improve our zero temperature analysis by using physical quark masses and finer lattices. In addition to the kaon decay constant used for scale setting we determine four quantities (masses of the \Omega baryon, K^*(892) and \phi(1020) mesons and the pion decay constant) which are found to agree with experiment. This implies that --independently of which of these quantities is used to set the overall scale-- the same results are obtained within a few percent. At finite temperature we use finer lattices down to a <= 0.1 fm (N_t=12 and N_t=16 at one point). Our new results confirm completely our previous findings. We compare the results with those of the 'hotQCD' collaboration.