Scaling behaviour at the $N_t=6$ chiral phase transition for 2-flavour lattice QCD with massless staggered quarks, and an irrelevant 4-fermion interaction

TL;DR

This study investigates the nature of the chiral phase transition in 2-flavour lattice QCD with massless quarks, revealing evidence for a second order transition with tricritical behavior, using an added 4-fermion interaction to facilitate simulations.

Contribution

The paper introduces an irrelevant 4-fermion interaction in lattice QCD simulations to explore the chiral transition at zero quark mass, providing new insights into its critical behavior.

Findings

Evidence for a second order chiral transition.

Critical exponents suggest tricritical behavior.

Chiral symmetry restoration confirmed by screening masses.

Abstract

We have simulated lattice QCD with 2 flavours of massless staggered quarks. An irrelevant chiral 4-fermion interaction was added to the standard quark action to allow us to simulate at zero quark mass. Thermodynamics was studied on lattices of temporal extent 6. Clear evidence for a second order chiral transition was observed and the critical exponents $\beta_{mag}$, $\delta$, $\nu$ and $\gamma_{mag}$ were measured. These exponents did not agree with those expected by standard universality arguments. They were, however, consistent with tricritical behaviour. The $\pi$ and $\sigma$ screening masses were measured and showed clear evidence for chiral symmetry restoration at this transition.