The Phase Diagram of High Temperature QCD with Three Flavors of Improved Staggered Quarks

TL;DR

This paper investigates the phase structure of high temperature QCD with three flavors of improved staggered quarks, finding rapid crossovers that sharpen with decreasing quark mass rather than true phase transitions.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the phase diagram of high temperature QCD with three flavors, using improved staggered quark simulations across a range of quark masses.

Findings

Rapid crossovers observed at studied quark masses

Crossovers sharpen as quark mass decreases

No true phase transitions detected in the studied range

Abstract

We report on progress in our study of high temperature QCD with three flavors of improved staggered quarks. Simulations are being carried out with three degenerate quarks with masses less than or equal to the strange quark mass, $m_s$, and with degenerate up and down quarks with masses in the range $0.1 m_s \leq m_{u,d}\leq 0.6 m_s$, and the strange quark mass fixed near its physical value. For the quark masses studied to date we find rapid crossovers, which sharpen as the quark mass is reduced, rather than bona fide phase transitions.