Two flavor QCD and Confinement

TL;DR

This study investigates the nature of the chiral transition in two-flavor QCD, providing evidence that supports a first-order transition, which has implications for understanding the confinement mechanism in QCD.

Contribution

The paper develops a finite size scaling analysis strategy and performs extensive lattice simulations to determine the order of the chiral transition in two-flavor QCD.

Findings

Excludes second order O(4) and O(2) universality classes for the transition.

Provides substantial evidence for a first order phase transition.

Performs detailed comparison with previous studies.

Abstract

We argue that the order of the chiral transition for N_f=2 is a sensitive probe of the QCD vacuum, in particular of the mechanism of color confinement. A strategy is developed to investigate the order of the transition by use of finite size scaling analysis. An in-depth numerical investigation is performed with staggered fermions on lattices with N_t=4 and N_s=12,16,20,24,32 and quark masses am_q ranging from 0.01335 to 0.307036. The specific heat and a number of susceptibilities are measured and compared with the expectations of an O(4) second order and of a first order phase transition. A second order transition in the O(4) and O(2) universality classes are excluded. Substantial evidence emerges for a first order transition. A detailed comparison with previous works is performed.