Finite temperature properties of QCD with two flavors and three, four and five colors

TL;DR

This study investigates the finite temperature phase transition in SU(N_c) gauge theories with 2 flavors and 3 to 5 colors, analyzing chiral symmetry restoration through numerical simulations of key observables.

Contribution

It provides the first comparative numerical analysis of the chiral transition across different numbers of colors in SU(N_c) gauge theories with two flavors.

Findings

Chiral condensate shows similar temperature dependence across N_c.

Screening masses behave consistently with chiral symmetry restoration.

Transition characteristics are largely independent of N_c within the studied range.

Abstract

I present a numerical study of the crossover between the low temperature chirally broken phase and the high temperature chirally restored phase in $SU(N_c)$ gauge theory with $N_c=3-5$ colors and $N_f=2$ degenerate fermion flavors. Fermion masses span a range of intermediate values (represented by the squared ratio of pseudoscalar to vector meson masses $(m_{PS}/m_V)^2\sim 0.25$ to 0.63). Observables include the temperature dependent chiral condensate and screening masses. At each fermion mass these quantities show nearly identical temperature dependence across $N_c$.