Finite temperature phase transition with two flavors of improved Wilson fermions

TL;DR

This study calculates the critical temperature for phase transitions in two-flavor improved Wilson fermions, finding a close coincidence of deconfinement and chiral transitions and estimating T_c around 172 MeV.

Contribution

First nonperturbative computation of the critical temperature for N_f=2 improved Wilson fermions with simulations on large lattices.

Findings

Deconfinement and chiral phase transitions coincide within numerical precision.

Critical temperature at physical quark mass is approximately 172 MeV.

Results support a second order phase transition in the chiral limit.

Abstract

The critical temperature is computed for N_f = 2 dynamical flavors of nonperturbatively improved Wilson fermions. The new simulations are performed on lattices 40^3 x 14 with lattice spacing and pion mass about 0.08 fm and 200 MeV, respectively. We find the deconfinement and chiral phase transitions to coincide within numerical precision. Our results are in broad agreement with a second order phase transition in the chiral limit. The critical temperature at the physical quark mass is found to be T_c = 172(3)(6) MeV.