QCD thermodynamics with two flavors of Wilson quarks at N_t=6

TL;DR

This study investigates QCD thermodynamics with two flavors of Wilson quarks at N_t=6, examining the crossover behavior, phase transition indications, and comparing results with staggered quarks, revealing potential first order transitions and improved consistency with continuum expectations.

Contribution

The paper provides new lattice QCD results for two-flavor Wilson quarks at N_t=6, analyzing the crossover, phase transition signals, and comparing thermodynamic ratios with staggered quarks.

Findings

Evidence of coexistence between high and low temperature regimes at certain parameters.

Crossover curve approaches the critical line where pion and quark masses vanish.

Results for T_c/m_rho are closer to staggered quark results at N_t=6.

Abstract

We report on a study of hadron thermodynamics with two flavors of Wilson quarks on 12^3x6 lattices. We have studied the crossover between the high and low temperature regimes for three values of the hopping parameter, kappa=0.16, 0.17, and 0.18. At each of these values of kappa we have carried out spectrum calculations on 12^3x24 lattices for two values of the gauge coupling in the vicinity of the crossover in order to set an energy scale for our thermodynamics calculations and to determine the critical value of the gauge coupling for which the pion and quark masses vanish. For kappa=0.17 and 0.18 we find coexistence between the high and low temperature regimes over 1,000 simulation time units indicating either that the equilibration time is extremely long or that there is a possibility of a first order phase transition. The pion mass is large at the crossover values of the gauge coupling, but the crossover curve has moved closer to the critical curve along which the pion and quark masses vanish, than it was on lattices with four time slices. In addition, values of the dimensionless quantity T_c/m_rho are in closer agreement with those for staggered quarks than was the case at N_t=4. (A POSTSCRIPT VERSION OF THIS PAPER IS AVAILABLE BY ANONYMOUS FTP FROM sarek.physics.ucsb.edu (128.111.8.250) IN THE FILE pub/wilson_thermo.ps)