On the scaling behavior of the chiral phase transition in QCD in finite and infinite volume

TL;DR

This paper investigates how finite volume and explicit symmetry breaking influence the chiral phase transition in QCD, using an effective model to bridge the gap between lattice simulations and theoretical predictions.

Contribution

It introduces a study of finite-volume effects on the chiral phase transition using a quark-meson model, highlighting deviations from infinite-volume scaling in realistic conditions.

Findings

Large scaling deviations for physical pion masses

Significant finite volume effects in current lattice simulations

Model captures a wide range of quark masses and volumes

Abstract

We study the scaling behavior of the two-flavor chiral phase transition using an effective quark-meson model. We investigate the transition between infinite-volume and finite-volume scaling behavior when the system is placed in a finite box. We can estimate effects that the finite volume and the explicit symmetry breaking by the current quark masses have on the scaling behavior which is observed in full QCD lattice simulations. The model allows us to explore large quark masses as well as the chiral limit in a wide range of volumes, and extract information about the scaling regimes.In particular, we find large scaling deviations for physical pion masses and significant finite volume effects for pion masses that are used in current lattice simulations.