Meson Screening Masses in (2+1)-Flavor QCD

TL;DR

This study provides lattice QCD calculations of mesonic screening masses across a wide temperature range, shedding light on symmetry restoration and the transition to perturbative behavior in high-temperature QCD.

Contribution

It offers the first continuum-extrapolated lattice QCD results for mesonic screening masses with physical quark masses over a broad temperature range.

Findings

Screening masses approach perturbative predictions at high temperatures.

Evidence of symmetry restoration in the high-temperature phase.

Results inform understanding of QCD transition dynamics.

Abstract

We present lattice QCD results for mesonic screening masses in the temperature range 140 MeV $\lesssim T \lesssim$ 2500 MeV. Our calculations were carried out using (2+1)-flavors of the Highly Improved Staggered Quark (HISQ) action, with a physical value for the strange quark mass and two values of the light quark mass corresponding to pion masses of 160 MeV and 140 MeV. Continuum-extrapolated results were obtained using calculations with a variety of lattice spacings corresponding to temporal lattice extents $N_\tau = 6 - 16$. We discuss the implications of these results for the effective restoration of various symmetries in the high temperature phase of QCD, as well as the approach toward the perturbative limit.