# Critical point phase transition for finite temperature 3-flavor QCD with non-perturbatively O($a$) improved Wilson fermions at $N_{\rm t}=10$

## TL;DR

This paper investigates the finite temperature phase transition in three-flavor QCD, locating the critical point and estimating the critical temperature and meson mass using improved Wilson fermions, providing insights into the QCD phase diagram.

## Contribution

It presents a non-perturbative study of the QCD critical point with improved Wilson fermions, including continuum extrapolation and finite size scaling analysis.

## Key findings

- Critical pseudo-scalar meson mass upper bound: ~170 MeV
- Critical temperature estimated at 134(3) MeV
- Identification of the critical point as an edge of the first order transition

## Abstract

We study the finite temperature phase structure for three-flavor QCD with a focus on locating the critical point which separates crossover and first order phase transition region in the chiral regime of the Columbia plot. In this study, we employ the Iwasaki gauge action and the non-perturvatively O($a$) improved Wilson-Clover fermion action. We discuss the finite size scaling analysis including the mixing of magnetization-like and energy-like observables. We carry out the continuum extrapolation of the critical point using newly generated data at $N_{\rm t}=8$, $10$ and estimate the upper bound of the critical pseudo-scalar meson mass $m_{\rm PS,E} \lesssim 170 {\rm MeV}$ and the critical temperature $T_{\rm E}=134(3){\rm MeV}$. Our estimate of the upper bound is derived from the existence of the critical point as an edge of the 1st order phase transition while that of the staggered-type fermions is based on its absence.