Chiral Limit of Strongly Coupled Lattice QCD at Finite Temperatures

TL;DR

This paper employs a novel directed-path algorithm to investigate the chiral limit of strongly coupled lattice QCD at finite temperatures, confirming theoretical predictions and characterizing the phase transition.

Contribution

It introduces an efficient algorithm for studying chiral properties in lattice QCD and provides new numerical evidence for the nature of the chiral phase transition.

Findings

Chiral susceptibility and pion decay constant measured accurately.

Evidence for singularities predicted by chiral perturbation theory.

Chiral phase transition is second order, in the O(2) universality class.

Abstract

We use the recently proposed directed-path algorithm to study the chiral limit of strongly coupled lattice QCD with staggered quarks at finite temperatures. The new algorithm allows us to compute the chiral susceptibility and the pion decay constant accurately on large lattices for massless quarks. In the low temperature phase we find clear evidence for the singularities predicted by chiral perturbation theory. We also show convincingly that the chiral phase transition is of second order and belongs to the O(2) universality class.