An effective field theory for warm QCD

TL;DR

This paper develops an effective field theory for warm QCD near the crossover temperature, incorporating symmetries and higher-dimensional terms, and validates it against lattice data for thermodynamics and correlations.

Contribution

It introduces a symmetry-based effective model for finite-temperature QCD including dimension 6 terms, with parameters fixed by lattice data, and explores its predictions for thermodynamics and fluctuations.

Findings

Static correlation functions match lattice results

Predictions for thermodynamic quantities are consistent with data

The model captures low-energy fluctuations around the crossover

Abstract

Using only global symmetries of QCD, we set up an effective model of quarks at finite temperature near the cross over, including all possible terms up to dimension 6. We first treat this in mean field theory. Then we investigate low-energy fluctuations around it up to one-loop order in fermions below the cross over. Static correlation functions of pions and the cross over temperature, both measured on the lattice, completely suffice to fix all parameters of the theory. We examine predictions of this theory, including those for thermodynamic quantities. The results are encouraging.