Phase Transition Critical Flavor Number of QCD

TL;DR

This paper provides a perturbative calculation of the critical flavor number in QCD, comparing it with non-perturbative methods like lattice QCD, and discusses the implications of the Banks-Zaks regime for weakly interacting quarks.

Contribution

It offers the first perturbative determination of the critical flavor number in QCD and compares it with existing non-perturbative results.

Findings

Perturbative estimate of the critical flavor number $N^{cr}_{f}$.

Comparison with lattice QCD and other non-perturbative methods.

Discussion on the implications for the Banks-Zaks regime.

Abstract

We present an entirely perturbative QCD determination of the critical phase transition flavor number $N^{cr}_{f}$ of QCD. The results obtained are compared with various determinations of $N^{cr}_{f}$ by non-pertrubative methods, including lattice QCD. The wider physics implication of the existence of the Banks-Zaks regime of QCD with only weakly interacting quarks, is discussed briefly.