Anomalous Chiral Symmetry Breaking above the QCD Phase Transition

Shailesh Chandrasekharan; Dong Chen; Norman Christ; Weonjong Lee; Robert Mawhinney; Pavlos Vranas

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.82.2463

Anomalous Chiral Symmetry Breaking above the QCD Phase Transition

Shailesh Chandrasekharan, Dong Chen, Norman Christ, Weonjong Lee, Robert Mawhinney, and Pavlos Vranas

Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 2463 – Published 22 March 1999

Abstract

We study the anomalous breaking of $U_{A} (1)$ symmetry just above the QCD phase transition for zero and two flavors of quarks, using a staggered fermion, lattice discretization. The properties of the QCD phase transition are expected to depend on the degree of $U_{A} (1)$ symmetry breaking in the transition region. For the physical case of two flavors, we carry out extensive simulations on a $16^{3} \times 4$ lattice, measuring a difference in susceptibilities which is sensitive to $U_{A} (1)$ symmetry and which avoids many of the staggered fermion discretization difficulties. The results suggest that anomalous effects are at or below the 15% level.

Received 8 July 1998

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.82.2463

Authors & Affiliations

Shailesh Chandrasekharan^*, Dong Chen^†, Norman Christ, Weonjong Lee^‡, Robert Mawhinney, and Pavlos Vranas

Department of Physics, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027

^*Present address: Department of Physics, Duke University, P.O. Box 90305, Durham, NC 27708.
^†Present address: CTP-LNS, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139.
^‡Present address: MS-B285, T-8 Group, Theory Division, Los Alamos National Lab, Los Alamos, NM 87545.