Numerical Study of the Two Color Attoworld

TL;DR

This study uses lattice Monte Carlo simulations to explore two-color QCD at low temperatures and finite chemical potential in a tiny volume, revealing discrete quark number levels and their relation to confinement transitions.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed numerical analysis of two-color QCD in the attoscale, confirming analytical predictions and highlighting phenomena beyond weak coupling explanations.

Findings

Quark number increases in discrete steps with chemical potential.

Polyakov line exhibits spikes corresponding to quark number jumps.

Quark number susceptibility indicates confinement-deconfinement transition.

Abstract

We consider QCD at very low temperatures and non-zero quark chemical potential from lattice Monte Carlo simulations of the two-color theory in a very small spatial volume (the attoscale). In this regime the quark number rises in discrete levels in qualitative agreement with what is found analytically at one loop on S3xS1 with radius R_S3 << 1/{\Lambda}_QCD. The detailed level degeneracy, however, cannot be accounted for using weak coupling arguments. At each rise in the quark number there is a corresponding spike in the Polyakov line, also in agreement with the perturbative results. In addition the quark number susceptibility shows a similar behaviour to the Polyakov line and appears to be a good indicator of a confinement-deconfinement type of transition.