We argue that the order of the chiral transition for Nf = 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 Lt = 4 and Ls = 12, 16, 20, 24, 32 and quark masses amq 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 detailed comparison with previous works, which all use similar techniques as ours, is performed. A second order transition in the O(4) and O(2) universality classes are incompatible with our data, which seem to prefer a first order transition. However we have Lt = 4 and unimproved action, so that a check with improved techniques (algorithm and action) and possibly larger Lt will be needed to assess this issue on a firm basis.
Two flavor QCD and confinement
D'ELIA, MASSIMO;DI GIACOMO, ADRIANO;
2005-01-01
Abstract
We argue that the order of the chiral transition for Nf = 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 Lt = 4 and Ls = 12, 16, 20, 24, 32 and quark masses amq 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 detailed comparison with previous works, which all use similar techniques as ours, is performed. A second order transition in the O(4) and O(2) universality classes are incompatible with our data, which seem to prefer a first order transition. However we have Lt = 4 and unimproved action, so that a check with improved techniques (algorithm and action) and possibly larger Lt will be needed to assess this issue on a firm basis.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
