The strong coupling regime of twelve flavors QCD

TL;DR

This paper investigates the nature of the bulk transition in twelve-flavor QCD, confirming its first-order character and exploring how action improvement influences the phase structure and emergence of exotic phases.

Contribution

It provides numerical evidence and theoretical discussion on the effects of action improvement on the bulk transition in twelve-flavor QCD, revealing the emergence of an exotic phase.

Findings

Confirmed first-order nature of the bulk transition with non-improved action

Identified a second rapid crossover and exotic phase with improved action

Discussed implications of action improvement on lattice systems at strong coupling

Abstract

We summarize the results recently reported in Ref.[1] [A. Deuzeman, M.P. Lombardo, T. Nunes da Silva and E. Pallante,"The bulk transition of QCD with twelve flavors and the role of improvement"] for the SU(3) gauge theory with Nf=12 fundamental flavors, and we add some numerical evidence and theoretical discussion. In particular, we study the nature of the bulk transition that separates a chirally broken phase at strong coupling from a chirally restored phase at weak coupling. When a non-improved action is used, a rapid crossover is observed at small bare quark masses. Our results confirm a first order nature for this transition, in agreement with previous results we obtained using an improved action. As shown in Ref.[1], when improvement of the action is used, the transition is preceded by a second rapid crossover at weaker coupling and an exotic phase emerges, where chiral symmetry is not yet broken. This can be explained [1] by the non hermiticity of the improved lattice Transfer matrix, arising from the competition of nearest-neighbor and non-nearest neighbor interactions, the latter introduced by improvement and becoming increasingly relevant at strong coupling and coarse lattices. We further comment on how improvement may generally affect any lattice system at strong coupling, be it graphene or non abelian gauge theories inside or slightly below the conformal window.