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We study the curvature of the chiral transition/crossover line between the low-temperature hadronic phase and the high-temperature quark-gluon-plasma phase at low densities, performing simulations of two-flavor QCD with improved Wilson quarks. After confirming that the chiral order parameter defined by a Ward-Takahashi identity is consistent with the scaling of the O(4) universality class at zero chemical potential, we extend the scaling analysis to finite chemical potential to determine the curvature of the chiral transition/crossover line at low densities assuming the O(4) universality. To convert the curvature in lattice units to that of the $T_c(\mu_B)$ in physical units, we evaluate the lattice scale applying a gradient flow method. We find $\kappa=0.0006(1)$ in the chiral limit, which is much smaller than that obtained in (2+1)-flavor QCD with improved staggered quarks., Comment: 7pages, 6figures, Lattice 2016 conference proceeding

We study the (2+1)-flavor QCD at nonzero temperatures using nonperturbatively improved Wilson quarks of the physical masses by the fixed scale approach. We perform physical point simulations at finite temperatures with the coupling parameters which were adopted by the PACS-CS Collaboration in their studies using the reweighting technique. Zero temperature values are obtained on the PACS-CS configurations which are open to the public on the ILDG/JLDG. Finite temperature configurations are generated with the RHMC algorithm. The lattice sizes are $32^3 \times N_t$ with $N_t=14$, 13, $\cdots$, 4 which correspond to $T \approx 160$--550 MeV. We present results of some basic observables at these temperatures and the status of our calculation of the equation of state., Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, proceedings of the 33rd International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory, July 14-18, 2015, Kobe, Japan

The reweighting method is widely used in numerical studies of QCD, in particular, for the cases in which the conventional Monte-Carlo method cannot be applied directly, e.g., finite density QCD. However, the application range of the reweighing method is restricted due to several problems. One of the most severe problems here is the overlap problem. To solve it, we examine a multipoint reweighting method in which simulations at several simulation points are combined in the data analyses. We systematically study the applicability and limitation of the multipoint reweighting method in two-flavor QCD at zero density. Measuring histograms of physical quantities at a series of simulation points, we apply the multipoint reweighting method to calculate the meson masses as continuous functions of the gauge coupling $\beta$ and the hopping parameters $\kappa$. We then determine lines of constant physics and beta functions, which are needed in a calculation of the equation of state at finite temperature., Comment: 16 pages, 25 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1501.06331

We study a reweighting method aiming at numerical studies of QCD at finite density, in which the conventional Monte-Carlo method cannot be applied directly. One of the most important problems in the reweighting method is the overlap problem. To solve it, we propose to perform simulations at several simulation points and combine their results in the data analyses. In this report, we introduce this multipoint reweighting method and test if the method works well by measuring histograms of physical quantities. Using this method, we calculate the meson masses as continuous functions of the gauge coupling beta and the hopping parameters kappa in QCD at zero density. We then determine lines of constant physics in the (beta, kappa) space and evaluate the derivatives of the lattice spacing with respect to beta and kappa along the lines of constant physics (inverse of the beta functions), which are needed in a calculation of the equation of state., Comment: 7 pages, 9 figures, talk presented at the 32nd International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory - Lattice 2014, June 23-28, 2014, Columbia University New York, NY

We study scaling behavior of a chiral order parameter in the low density region, performing a simulation of two-flavor QCD with improved Wilson quarks. The scaling behavior of the chiral order parameter defined by a Ward-Takahashi identity agrees with the scaling function of the three-dimensional O(4) spin model at zero chemical potential. We extend the scaling study to finite density QCD. Applying the reweighting method and calculating derivatives of the chiral order parameter with respect to the chemical potential, the scaling properties of the chiral phase transition are discussed in the low density region. We moreover calculate the curvature of the phase boundary of the chiral phase transition in the temperature and chemical potential plane assuming the O(4) scaling relation., Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, proceedings of the 31st International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory, July 29- August 3, 2013, Mainz, Germany

We study the phase structure of lattice QCD with heavy quarks at finite temperature and density by a histogram method. We determine the location of the critical point at which the first-order deconfining transition in the heavy-quark limit turns into a crossover at intermediate quark masses through a change of the shape of the histogram under variation of coupling parameters. We estimate the effect of the complex phase factor which causes the sign problem at finite density, and show that, in heavy-quark QCD, the effect is small around the critical point. We determine the critical surface in 2+1 flavor QCD in the heavy-quark region at all values of the chemical potential mu including mu=infty., Comment: 26 pages, 21 figures, 1 table

We study thermodynamic properties of 2+1 flavor QCD with improved Wilson quarks coupled with the RG improved Iwasaki glue, using the fixed scale approach. We present the results for the equation of state, renormalized Polyakov loop, and chiral condensate., Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures, proceedings of the 30th International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory, June 24-29, 2012, Cairns, Australia

We study the phase structure of QCD at high temperature and density by lattice QCD simulations adopting a histogram method. We try to solve the problems which arise in the numerical study of the finite density QCD, focusing on the probability distribution function (histogram). As a first step, we investigate the quark mass dependence and the chemical potential dependence of the probability distribution function as a function of the Polyakov loop when all quark masses are sufficiently large, and study the properties of the distribution function. The effect from the complex phase of the quark determinant is estimated explicitly. The shape of the distribution function changes with the quark mass and the chemical potential. Through the shape of the distribution, the critical surface which separates the first order transition and crossover regions in the heavy quark region is determined for the 2+1-flavor case., Comment: 7 pages, 12 figures, proceedings of the 30th International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory, June 24-29, 2012, Cairns, Australia

We extend our previous study of the QCD phase structure in the heavy quark region to non-zero chemical potentials. To identify the critical point where the first order deconfining transition terminates, we study an effective potential defined by the probability distribution function of the plaquette and the Polyakov loop. The reweighting technique is shown to be powerful in evaluating the effective potential in a wide range of the plaquette and Polyakov loop expectation values. We adopt the cumulant expansion to overcome the sign problem in the calculation of complex phase of the quark determinant. We find that the method provides us with an intuitive and powerful way to study the phase structure. We estimate the location of the critical point at finite chemical potential in the heavy quark region., Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures; XXIX International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory - Lattice 2011

We study the equation of state in 2+1 flavor QCD with nonperturbatively improved Wilson quarks coupled with the RG-improved Iwasaki glue. We apply the $T$-integration method to nonperturbatively calculate the equation of state by the fixed-scale approach. With the fixed-scale approach, we can purely vary the temperature on a line of constant physics without changing the system size and renormalization constants. Unlike the conventional fixed-$N_t$ approach, it is easy to keep scaling violations small at low temperature in the fixed scale approach. We study 2+1 flavor QCD at light quark mass corresponding to $m_\pi/m_\rho \simeq 0.63$, while the strange quark mass is chosen around the physical point. Although the light quark masses are heavier than the physical values yet, our equation of state is roughly consistent with recent results with highly improved staggered quarks at large $N_t$., Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures, v2: Table I and Figure 3 are corrected, reference updated. Main discussions and conclusions are unchanged, v3: version to appear in PRD, v4: reference added

Free energies between static quarks and Debye screening masses in the quark-gluon plasma are studied on the basis of Polyakov-line correlations in lattice simulations of 2+1 flavors QCD with the renormalization-group improved gluon action and the $O(a)$-improved Wilson quark action. We perform simulations at $m_{\rm PS}/m_{\rm V} = 0.63$ (0.74) for light (strange) flavors with lattice sizes of $32^3 \times N_t$ with $N_t=4$--12. We adopt the fixed-scale approach, where temperature can be varied without changing the spatial volume and renormalization factor. We find that, at short distance, the free energies of static quarks in color-singlet channel converge to the static-quark potential evaluated from the Wilson-loop at zero-temperature, in accordance with the expected insensitivity of short distance physics to the temperature. At long distance, the free energies of static quarks approach to twice the single-quark free energies, implying that the interaction between static quarks is fully screened. The screening properties can be well described by the screened Coulomb form with appropriate Casimir factor at high temperature. We also discuss a limitation of the fixed-scale approach at high temperature., Comment: 16 pages, 14 figures

We propose a new approach to finite density QCD based on a histogram method with phase quenched simulations at finite chemical potential. Integrating numerically the derivatives of the logarithm of the quark determinant with respect to the chemical potential, we calculate the reweighting factor and the complex phase of the quark determinant. The complex phase is handled with a cumulant expansion to avoid the sign problem. We examine the applicability of this method., Comment: 7 pages, 11 figures

We study the quark mass dependence of the finite temperature QCD phase transition in the heavy quark region using an effective potential defined through the probability distribution function of the average plaquette. Performing a simulation of SU(3) pure gauge theory, we first confirm that the distribution function has two peaks indicating that the phase transition is of first order in the heavy quark limit, while the first order transition turns into a crossover as the quark mass decreases from infinity, where the mass dependence of the distribution function is evaluated by the reweighting method combined with the hopping parameter expansion. We determine the endpoint of the first order transition region for N_f=1, 2, 3 and 2+1 cases. The quark mass dependence of the latent heat is also evaluated in the first order transition region., Comment: 13 pages, 17 figures, 3 tables

We propose a method to evaluate spectral functions on the lattice based on a variational method. On a lattice with a finite spatial extent, spectral functions consist of discrete spectra only. Adopting a variational method, we calculate the locations and the heights of spectral functions at low-lying discrete spectra. We first test the method in the case of analytically solvable free Wilson quarks at zero and finite temperatures and confirm that the method well reproduces the analytic results for low-lying spectra. We find that we can systematically improve the results by increasing the number of trial states. We then apply the method to calculate the charmonium spectral functions for S and P-wave states at zero-temperature in quenched QCD and compare the results with those obtained using the conventional maximum entropy method (MEM). The results for the ground state are consistent with the location and the area of the first peak in spectral functions from the MEM, while the variational method leads to a mass which is closer to the experimental value for the first excited state. We also investigate the temperature dependence of the spectral functions for S-wave states below and above $T_c$. We obtain no clear evidences for dissociation of $J/\psi$ and $\eta_c$ up to 1.4$T_c$., Comment: 13 pages, 23 figures

We study scaling behavior of a chiral order parameter performing a simulation of two-flavor QCD with improved Wilson quarks. It has been shown that the scaling behavior of the chiral order parameter defined by a Ward-Takahashi identity agrees with the scaling function of the three-dimensional O(4) spin model at zero chemical potential. We extend the scaling study to finite density QCD. Calculating derivatives of the chiral order parameter with respect to the chemical potential in two-flavor QCD, the scaling property of chiral phase transition is discussed in the low density region. We moreover calculate the curvature of the phase boundary of the chirl phase transition in the temperature and chemical potential plane assuming the O(4) scaling relation., Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, poster presented at the XXVIII International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory, June 14-19 2010, Villasimius, Italy

We study the quark mass dependence of the QCD phase transition by an effective potential defined through the distribution function of observables. As a test of the method, we study the first order deconfinement phase transition in the heavy quark mass limit and its fate at lighter quark masses. We confirm that the distribution function for the plaquette has two peaks indicating that the phase transition is of first order in the heavy quark limit. We then study the quark mass dependence of the distribution function by a reweighting method combined with the hopping parameter expansion. We find that the first order transition turns into a crossover as the quark mass decreases. We determine the critical point for the cases of $N_f$=1, 2, 3 and 2+1. We find that the probability distribution function provides us with a powerful tool to study the order of transitions., Comment: 7 pages, 7 figure, Talk presented at the XXVIII International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory, Lattice2010, Villasimius, Italy, June 2010

We present the status of our study on the equation of state in 2+1 flavor QCD with non-perturbatively improved Wilson quarks coupled with the RG improved glue. We apply the T-integration method to non-perturbatively calculate the equation of state by the fixed-scale approach., Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures, talk presented at the XXVIII International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory, June 14-19 2010, Villasimius, Italy

We present a new method to calculate meson spectral functions (SPFs) on the lattice based on a variational method. Because, on a finite volume lattice, the meson SPFs have discrete spectra only, a suitable way to extract such discrete signals is needed. Using a variational method, we can calculate several discrete quantities such as the position and the area of spectral peaks for low-lying states. Moreover data accuracy can be improved by increasing the number of basis functions. In this report, we first confirm our method in the free quark case and show that our method works well. Then, we apply the method to a quenched lattice QCD simulation and calculate the charmonium SPFs for S and P-waves at zero temperature. Our results for the ground state are well consistent with the position and the area of the lowest peaks of charmonium SPFs calculated by the conventional maximum entropy method. For first excited states, the signals may be reliablly extracted with our method because the charmonium mass converges to a value close to the experimental one when the number of basis functions is increased. We also investigate the SPFs for S-wave charmonia at below and above $T_c$. Our results suggest that $J/\psi$ and $\eta_c$ may survive up to 1.4$T_c$., Comment: 7 Pages, 6 figures, talk presented at the XXVIII International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory, June 14-19 2010, Villasimius, Italy

The WHOT-QCD Collaboration is pushing forward lattice studies of QCD at finite temperatures and densities using improved Wilson quarks. We first present results on QCD at zero and finite densities with two flavors of degenerate quarks (N_F=2 QCD) adopting the conventional fixed-Nt approach. We then report on the status of a study of N_F=2+1 QCD adopting a fixed-scale approach armed with the T-integration method which we have developed., Comment: 6 pages, 12 figures, invited talk presented at the YITP workshop on "New Frontiers in QCD 2010", March 1-19, 2010, Kyoto, Japan

Screenings of the quark-gluon plasma in electric and magnetic sectors are studied on the basis of generalized Polyakov-line correlation functions in lattice QCD simulations with two flavors of improved Wilson quarks. Using the Euclidean-time reflection ($\R$) and the charge conjugation ($\Ca$), electric and magnetic screening masses are extracted in a gauge invariant manner. Long distance behavior of the standard Polyakov-line correlation in the quark-gluon plasma is found to be dictated by the magnetic screening. Also, ratio of the two screening masses agrees with that obtained from the dimensionally-reduced effective field theory and the ${\cal N}=4$ supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory.

The free energy between a static quark and an antiquark is studied by using the color-singlet Polyakov-line correlation at finite temperature. We perform simulations on $32^3 \times 12$, 10, 8, 6, 4 lattices in the high temperature phase with the RG-improved gluon action and 2+1 flavors of the clover-improved Wilson quark action. Since the simulations are based on the fixed scale approach that the temperature can be varied without changing the spatial volume and renormalization factor, it is possible to investigate temperature dependence of the heavy-quark free energy without any adjustment of the overall constant. We find that, the heavy-quark free energies at short distance converge to the heavy-quark potential evaluated from the Wilson-loop operator at zero temperature, in accordance with the expected insensitivity of short distance physics to the temperature. At long distance, the heavy-quark free energies approach to twice the single-quark free energies, implying that the interaction between heavy quarks is screened. The Debye screening mass obtained from the long range behavior of the heavy-quark free energy is compared with results of the thermal perturbation theory and those of $N_f=2$ and $N_f=0$ lattice simulations., Comment: To appear in the proceedigns of 27th International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory (Lattice 2009), Beijing, China, 25-31 July 2009

We report on the status of our study towards the equation of state in 2+1 flavor QCD with improved Wilson quarks. To reduce the computational cost which is quite demanding for Wilson-type quarks, we adopt the fixed scale approach, i.e. the temperature T is varied by N_t at fixed lattice spacing. Since the conventional integral method to obtain the pressure is inapplicable at a fixed scale, we adopt the "T-integral method", to calculate the pressure non-perturbatively. Reduction of the computational cost of T=0 simulations thus achieved is indispensable to study EOS in QCD with dynamical quarks., Comment: 8 pages, poster presented at The XXVII International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory (Lattice 2009), July 26-31 2009, Peking University, Beijing, China

We study the equation of state at finite temperature and density in two-flavor QCD with the RG-improved gluon action and the clover-improved Wilson quark action on a $ 16^3 \times 4$ lattice. Along the lines of constant physics at $m_{\rm PS}/m_{\rm V} = 0.65$ and 0.80, we compute the second and forth derivatives of the grand canonical partition function with respect to the quark chemical potential $\mu_q = (\mu_u+\mu_d)/2$ and the isospin chemical potential $\mu_I = (\mu_u-\mu_d)/2$ at vanishing chemical potentials, and study the behaviors of thermodynamic quantities at finite $\mu_q$ using these derivatives for the case $\mu_I=0$. In particular, we study density fluctuations at none-zero temperature and density by calculating the quark number and isospin susceptibilities and their derivatives with respect to $\mu_q$. To suppress statistical fluctuations, we also examine new techniques applicable at low densities. We find a large enhancement in the fluctuation of quark number when the density increased near the pseudo-critical temperature, suggesting a critical point at finite $\mu_q$ terminating the first order transition line between hadronic and quark gluon plasma phases. This result agrees with the previous results using staggered-type quark actions qualitatively. Furthermore, we study heavy-quark free energies and Debye screening masses at finite density by measuring the first and second derivatives of these quantities for various color channels of heavy quark-quark and quark-anti-quark pairs. The results suggest that, to the leading order of $\mu_q$, the interaction between two quarks becomes stronger at finite densities, while that between quark and anti-quark becomes weaker., Comment: 38 pages, 63 figures

The free energy between a static quark and an antiquark is studied by using the color-singlet Polyakov-line correlation at finite temperature in lattice QCD with 2+1 flavors of improved Wilson quarks. From the simulations on $32^3 \times 12$, 10, 8, 6, 4 lattices in the high temperature phase, based on the fixed scale approach, we find that, the heavy-quark free energies at short distance converge to the heavy-quark potential evaluated from the Wilson loop at zero temperature, in accordance with the expected insensitivity of short distance physics to the temperature. At long distance, the heavy-quark free energies approach to twice the single-quark free energies, implying that the interaction between heavy quarks is screened. The Debye screening mass obtained from the long range behavior of the free energy is compared with the results of thermal perturbation theory., Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures - To appear in the conference proceedings for Quark Matter 2009, March 30 - April 4, Knoxville, Tennessee

We propose a fixed scale approach to calculate the equation of state (EOS) in lattice QCD. In this approach, the temperature T is varied by Nt at fixed lattice spacings. This enables us to reduce T=0 simulations which are required to provide basic data in finite temperature studies but are quite expensive in the conventional fixed-Nt approach. Since the conventional integral method to obtain the pressure is inapplicable at fixed scale, we introduce a new method, "T-integration method", to calculate pressure non-perturbatively. We test the fixed scale approach armed with the T-integral method in quenched QCD on isotropic and anisotropic lattices. Our method is found to be powerful to obtain reliable results for the equation of state, especially at intermediate and low temperatures. Reduction of the computational cost of T=0 simulations is indispensable to study EOS in QCD with dynamical quarks. The status of our study in Nf=2+1 QCD with improved Wilson quarks is also reported., Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures - To appear in the conference proceedings for Quark Matter 2009, March 30 - April 4, Knoxville, Tennessee. Fonts in the figures magnified

Screening properties of the quark gluon plasma are studied from Polyakov-loop correlation in lattice QCD simulations with two flavors of improved Wilson quarks at temperatures $T/\Tpc \simeq 1$--4 where $\Tpc$ is the pseudocritical temperature. Using the Euclidean-time reflection symmetry and the charge conjugation symmetry, we introduce various types of Polyakov-loop correlation functions and extract screening masses in magnetic and electric sectors. We find that the temperature dependence of the screening masses are well described by the weak coupling expansion. We also find that a ratio of the screening masses in the electric sector to the magnetic sector shows qualitative agreement with a prediction from the dimensionally-reduced effective field theory and the N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory at $1.3 < T/\Tpc < 3$., Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, Talk given at the XXVI International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory (LATTICE 2008), July 14-19, 2008, Williamsburg, Virginia, USA

We study the equation of state in two-flavor QCD at finite temperature and density. Simulations are made with the RG-improved gluon action and the clover-improved Wilson quark action. Along the lines of constant physics for $m_{\rm PS}/m_{\rm V} = 0.65$ and 0.80, we compute the derivatives of the quark determinant with respect to the quark chemical potential $\mu_q$ up to the fourth order at $\mu_q=0$. We adopt several improvement techniques in the evaluation. We study thermodynamic quantities and quark number susceptibilities at finite $\mu_q$ using these derivatives. We find enhancement of the quark number susceptibility at finite $\mu_q$, in accordance with previous observations using staggered-type quarks. This suggests the existence of a nearby critical point., Comment: 7 pages, 16 figures, presented at the XXVI International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory (LATTICE 2008), July 14-19, 2008, Williamsburg, Virginia, USA

We study thermodynamics of SU(3) gauge theory at fixed scales on the lattice, where we vary temperature by changing the temporal lattice size N_t=(Ta_t)^{-1}. In the fixed scale approach, finite temperature simulations are performed on common lattice spacings and spatial volumes. Consequently, we can isolate thermal effects in observables from other uncertainties, such as lattice artifact, renormalization factor, and spatial volume effect. Furthermore, in the EOS calculations, the fixed scale approach is able to reduce computational costs for zero temperature subtraction and parameter search to find lines of constant physics, which are demanding in full QCD simulations. As a test of the approach, we study the thermodynamics of the SU(3) gauge theory on isotropic and anisotropic lattices. In addition to the equation of state, we calculate the critical temperature and the static quark free energy at a fixed scale., Comment: 7pages, 3figures, proceedings of Lattice 2008, Williamsburg, Virginia, USA, July 14-19, 2008

Dissociation temperatures of J/\psi, \psi', and \chi_c states play key roles in the sequential J/\psi suppression scenario for high energy heavy ion collisions. We report on a study of charmonium dissociation temperatures in quenched lattice QCD. On anisotropic lattices, we first subtract the effects of the constant mode in finite temperature meson correlators, which have lead to unphysical results in previous studies. We then extract ground and first exited state masses by diagonalizing correlation functions among different source and sink operators. To distinguish bound states from scattering states, we first compare the charmonium mass spectra under different spatial boundary conditions, and examine the shape and the volume-dependence of their Bethe-Salpeter wave functions. From these studies, we found so far no sign of scattering states up to about 2.3T_c., Comment: 4pages, 2figures, proceedings of Quark Matter 2008 (QM2008), Jaipur, India, Feb 4-10, 2008

A new approach to study the equation of state in finite-temperature QCD is proposed on the lattice. Unlike the conventional method in which the temporal lattice size $N_t$ is fixed, the temperature $T$ is varied by changing $N_t$ at fixed lattice scale. The pressure of the hot QCD plasma is calculated by the integration of the trace anomaly with respect to $T$ at fixed lattice scale. This "$T$-integral method" is tested in quenched QCD on isotropic and anisotropic lattices and is shown to give reliable results especially at intermediate and low temperatures., Comment: 5 pages, ReVTeX, 4 figures, version to appear in PRD

We calculate the spatial string tension in (2+1) flavor QCD with physical strange quark mass and almost physical light quark masses using lattices with temporal extent N_tau=4,6 and 8. We compare our results on the spatial string tension with predictions of dimensionally reduced QCD. This suggests that also in the presence of light dynamical quarks dimensional reduction works well down to temperatures 1.5T_c., Comment: 8 pages ReVTeX, 4 figures

Thermodynamics of two-flavor QCD at finite temperature and density is studied on a $16^3 \times 4$ lattice, using a renormalization group improved gauge action and the clover improved Wilson quark action. In the simulations along lines of constant $m_{\rm PS}/m_{\rm V}$, we calculate the Taylor expansion coefficients of the heavy-quark free energy with respect to the quark chemical potential ($\mu_q$) up to the second order. By comparing the expansion coefficients of the free energies between quark($Q$)and antiquark($\bar{Q}$), and between $Q$ and $Q$, we find a characteristic difference at finite $\mu_q$ due to the first order coefficient of the Taylor expansion. We also calculate the quark number and isospin susceptibilities, and find that the second order coefficient of the quark number susceptibility shows enhancement around the pseudo-critical temperature., Comment: Talk given at the XXV International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory (Lattice 2007), July 30 - August 4, 2007, Regensburg, Germany

We present results on the equation of state in QCD with two light quark flavors and a heavier strange quark. Calculations with improved staggered fermions have been performed on lattices with temporal extent Nt =4 and 6 on a line of constant physics with almost physical quark mass values; the pion mass is about 220 MeV, and the strange quark mass is adjusted to its physical value. High statistics results on large lattices are obtained for bulk thermodynamic observables, i.e. pressure, energy and entropy density, at vanishing quark chemical potential for a wide range of temperatures, 140 MeV < T < 800 MeV. We present a detailed discussion of finite cut-off effects which become particularly significant for temperatures larger than about twice the transition temperature. At these high temperatures we also performed calculations of the trace anomaly on lattices with temporal extent Nt=8. Furthermore, we have performed an extensive analysis of zero temperature observables including the light and strange quark condensates and the static quark potential at zero temperature. These are used to set the temperature scale for thermodynamic observables and to calculate renormalized observables that are sensitive to deconfinement and chiral symmetry restoration and become order parameters in the infinite and zero quark mass limits, respectively., Comment: 22 pages, 17 EPS-figures; revised version, updated references, data added in Tab.1, several smaller changes

We study the finite temperature transition in QCD with three flavors of equal masses using the R and RHMC algorithm on lattices with temporal extent N_{\tau}=4 and 6. For the transition temperature in the continuum limit we find r_0 T_c=0.429(8) for the light pseudo-scalar mass corresponding to the end point of the 1st order transition region. When comparing the results obtained with the R and RHMC algorithms for p4fat3 action we see no significant step-size errors down to a lightest pseudo-scalar mass of m_{ps} r_0=0.4., Comment: 13 pages, RevTeX, 10 figures

We report on the status of our QCD thermodynamics project. It is performed on the QCDOC machine at Brookhaven National Laboratory and the APEnext machine at Bielefeld University. Using a 2+1 flavor formulation of QCD at almost realistic quark masses we calculated several thermodynamical quantities. In this proceeding we show the susceptibilites of the chiral condensate and the Polyakov loop, the static quark potential and the spatial string tension., Comment: To appear in the proceedings of International Conference on Strong and Electroweak Matter (SEWM 2006), Upton, New York, 10-13 May 2006

We present a detailed calculation of the transition temperature in QCD with two light and one heavier (strange) quark mass on lattices with temporal extent N_t =4 and 6. Calculations with improved staggered fermions have been performed for various light to strange quark mass ratios in the range, 0.05 <= m_l/m_s <= 0.5, and with a strange quark mass fixed close to its physical value. From a combined extrapolation to the chiral (m_l -> 0) and continuum (aT = 1/N_t -> 0) limits we find for the transition temperature at the physical point T_c r_0 = 0.457(7) where the scale is set by the Sommer-scale parameter r_0 defined as the distance in the static quark potential at which the slope takes on the value, (dV_qq(r)/dr)_r=r_0 = 1.65/r_0^2. Using the currently best known value for r_0 this translates to a transition temperature T_c = 192(7)(4)MeV. The transition temperature in the chiral limit is about 3% smaller. We discuss current ambiguities in the determination of T_c in physical units and also comment on the universal scaling behavior of thermodynamic quantities in the chiral limit., Comment: 18 pages, 14 EPS figures, replaced wrong entries in column 7 of Table A.7

We study the spin $\frac12$ hadronic state in quenched lattice QCD to search for a possible $S=+1$ pentaquark resonance. Simulations are carried out on $8^3\times 24$, $10^3\times 24$, $12^3\times 24$ and $16^3\times 24$ lattices at $\beta$=5.7 at the quenched level with the standard plaquette gauge action and Wilson quark action. We adopt two independent operators with I=0 and $J^P=\frac12$ to construct a $2\times 2$ correlation matrix. After the diagonalization of the correlation matrix, we successfully obtain the energies of the ground-state and the 1st excited-state in this channel. The volume dependence of the energies suggests the existence of a possible resonance state slightly above the NK threshold in I=0 and $J^P=\frac12^-$ channel., Comment: Talk given at the International Workshop on PENTAQUARK04, SPring-8, Japan, 20-23 July 2004; 7 pages, 3 figures

The properties of hadron screening masses around the deconfinement phase transition at finite baryonic density can be studied by evaluating the Taylor coefficients with respect to the iso-scalar and iso-vector chemical potentials. We simulate 2-flavour lattice QCD with staggered fermions on a 12*12*24*6 lattice with ma = 0.05 and 0.10 and report investigations of nucleon, pseudo-scalar and vector mesons. We present new, strong evidence that in the confining phase, the screening masses at vanishing chemical potential have significant temperature dependence, but the effect of the iso-scalar chemical potential is very small. Above the critical temperature, the second derivative terms of mesons rapidly increase as contrasted to the case of baryon. We also study the responses of the screening masses to an iso-vector chemical potential and discuss some of the issues related to the properties of hadron masses at finite density., Comment: 7 pages with 5 figures; added two new references, the title of article and the section 'Concluding Remarks' are slightly changed

We present results on the light hadron spectrum and quark mass in two-flavor QCD calculated with small sea quark masses down to $m_{PS}/m_{V}=0.35$. The configurations are generated using the RG improved gauge and tadpole-improved clover quark action at $\beta=1.8$, where $a^{-1} \simeq 1$ GeV. Chiral extrapolations are made using not only polynomials and ChPT in the continuum but also formulae of Wilson chiral perturbation theory (WChPT) including $O(a^2)$ chiral breaking terms. We examine the viability of WChPT and its influence on quark masses., Comment: 3 pages, 3 figures, Talk presented at Lattice2004(spectrum), Fermilab, June 21-26, 2004

Renormalization constants ($Z$-factors) of vector and axial-vector currents are determined non-perturbatively in quenched QCD for a renormalization group improved gauge action and a tadpole improved clover quark action using the Schr\"odinger functional method. Non-perturbative values of $Z$-factors turn out to be smaller than one-loop perturbative values by $O(15%)$ at lattice spacing of $a^{-1}\approx$ 1 GeV. The pseudoscalar and vector meson decay constants calculated with the non-perturbative $Z$-factors show a much better scaling behavior compared to previous results obtained with tadpole improved one-loop $Z$-factors. In particular, the non-perturbative $Z$-factors normalized at infinite physical volume show that scaling violation of the decay constants are within about 10% up to the lattice spacing $a^{-1}\sim 1$ GeV. The continuum estimates obtained from data in the range $a^{-1}=$ 1 -- 2 GeV agree with those determined from finer lattices ($a^{-1}\sim 2-4$ GeV) with the standard action., Comment: 19 pages, 18 eps figures. Corrected address

We extend the study of the light hadron spectrum and the quark mass in two-flavor QCD to smaller sea quark mass, corresponding to $m_{PS}/m_{V}=0.60$--0.35. Numerical simulations are carried out using the RG-improved gauge action and the meanfield-improved clover quark action at $\beta=1.8$ ($a = 0.2$ fm from $\rho$ meson mass). We observe that the light hadron spectrum for small sea quark mass does not follow the expectation from chiral extrapolations with quadratic functions made from the region of $m_{PS}/m_{V}=0.80$--0.55. Whereas fits with either polynomial or continuum chiral perturbation theory (ChPT) fails, the Wilson ChPT (WChPT) that includes $a^2$ effects associated with explicit chiral symmetry breaking successfully fits the whole data: In particular, WChPT correctly predicts the light quark mass spectrum from simulations for medium heavy quark mass, such as $m_{PS}/m_V \simgt 0.5$. Reanalyzing the previous data %at $m_{PS}/m_{V}=0.80$--0.55 with the use of WChPT, we find the mean up and down quark mass being smaller than the previous result from quadratic chiral extrapolation by approximately 10%, $m_{ud}^{\bar{\rm MS}}(\mu=2 {GeV}) = 3.11(17)$ [MeV] in the continuum limit., Comment: 33 pages

The non-perturbative $\csw$ determined by the Schr\"{o}dinger functional (SF) method with the RG-improved gauge action in dynamical $N_f=3$ QCD shows a finite volume effect when the numerical simulations are carried out at a constant lattice size $L/a$. We remove the unwanted finite volume effect by keeping physical lattice extent $L$ at a constant. The details of the method and the result obtained for non-perturbative $\csw$ with a constant $L$ are reported., Comment: Lattice 2003 (improve), 3 pages, 3 figures

We study charmonium using the standard relativistic formalism in the quenched approximation, on a set of lattices with isotropic lattice spacings ranging from 0.1 to 0.04 fm. We concentrate on the calculation of the hyperfine splitting between eta_c and J/psi, aiming for a controlled continuum extrapolation of this quantity. The splitting extracted from the non-perturbatively improved clover Dirac operator shows very little dependence on the lattice spacing for $a \leq 0.1$ fm. The dependence is much stronger for Wilson and tree-level improved clover operators, but they still yield consistent extrapolations if sufficiently fine lattices, $a \leq 0.07$ fm ($a M(\eta_c) \leq 1$), are used. Our result for the hyperfine splitting is 77(2)(6) MeV (where Sommer's parameter, r_0, is used to fix the scale). This value remains about 30% below experiment. Dynamical fermions and OZI-forbidden diagrams both contribute to the remainder. Results for the eta_c and J/psi wave functions are also presented., Comment: 22 pages, 7 figures

We report on our study of two-flavor full QCD on anisotropic lattices using $O(a)$-improved Wilson quarks coupled with an RG-improved glue. The bare gauge and quark anisotropies corresponding to the renormalized anisotropy $\xi=a_s/a_t = 2$ are determined as functions of $\beta$ and $\kappa$, which covers the region of spatial lattice spacings $a_s\approx 0.28$--0.16 fm and $m_{PS}/m_V\approx 0.6$--0.9. The calibrations of the bare anisotropies are performed with the Wilson loop and the meson dispersion relation at 4 lattice cutoffs and 5--6 quark masses. Using the calibration results we calculate the meson mass spectrum and the Sommer scale $r_0$. We confirm that the values of $r_0$ calculated for the calibration using pseudo scalar and vector meson energy momentum dispersion relation coincide in the continuum limit within errors. This work serves to lay ground toward studies of heavy quark systems and thermodynamics of QCD including the extraction of the equation of state in the continuum limit using Wilson-type quark actions., Comment: 16 pages, 23 figures, Version accepted for publication in Physical Review D

We study a block spin transformation in the SU(3) lattice gauge theory on anisotropic lattices to obtain Iwasaki's renormalization group improved action for anisotropic cases. For the class of actions with plaquette and $1\times2$ rectangular terms, we determine the improvement parameters as functions of the anisotropy $\xi= a_s/a_t$. We find that the program of improvement works well also on anisotropic lattices. From a study of an indicator which estimates the distance to the renormalized trajectory, we show that, for the range of the anisotropy $\xi \approx 1$--4, the coupling parameters previously determined for isotropic lattices improve the theory considerably., Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures

We present results for the mass of the etaprime meson for two-flavor lattice QCD in the continuum limit, calculated on the CP-PACS computer, using an RG-improved gauge action and clover fermion action with tadpole-improved csw. Measurements are made at three couplings corresponding to a approx. 0.22, 0.16, 0.11 fm for four quark masses corresponding to mpi over mrho approx. 0.8, 0.75, 0.7, 0.6. Thw two-loop diagrams are evaluated using a noisy source method. Quark smearing for both one- and two- loop diagrams is successfully applied to obtain ground state signals in the etaprime channel. We obtain metaprime=0.960(87)+0.036-0.286GeV in the continuum limit, where the second error represents the systematic uncertainty coming from varying the functional form for chiral and continuum extrapolations., Comment: 3 pages, 6 figures

We present results for the mass of the eta-prime meson in the continuum limit for two-flavor lattice QCD, calculated on the CP-PACS computer, using a renormalization-group improved gauge action, and Sheikholeslami and Wohlert's fermion action with tadpole-improved csw. Correlation functions are measured at three values of the coupling constant beta corresponding to the lattice spacing a approx. 0.22, 0.16, 0.11 fm and for four values of the quark mass parameter kappa corresponding to mpi over mrho approx. 0.8, 0.75, 0.7 and 0.6. For each beta, kappa pair, 400-800 gauge configurations are used. The two-loop diagrams are evaluated using a noisy source method. We calculate eta-prime propagators using local sources, and find that excited state contributions are much reduced by smearing. A full analysis for the smeared propagators gives metaprime=0.960(87)+0.036-0.248 GeV, in the continuum limit, where the second error represents the systematic uncertainty coming from varying the functional form for chiral and continuum extrapolations., Comment: 9 pages, 19 figures, 4 tables

We present a fully non-perturbative determination of the $O(a)$ improvement coefficient $c_{\rm SW}$ in three-flavor dynamical QCD for the RG improved as well as the plaquette gauge actions, using the Schr\"odinger functional scheme. Results are compared with one-loop estimates at weak gauge coupling., Comment: 3 pages, 6 figures, Lattice2002(Improvement and Renormalization), Unnecessary files are removed

We study charmonium correlators at finite temperature in quenched anisotropic lattice QCD. The smearing technique is applied to enhance the low energy part of the correlator. We use two analysis procedures: the maximum entropy method for extraction of the spectral function without assuming specific form, as an estimate of the shape of spectral function, and the $\chi^2$ fit assuming typical forms as quantitative evaluation of the parameters associated to the forms. We find that at $T\simeq 0.9T_c$ the ground state peak has almost the same mass as at T=0 and almost vanishing width. At $T\simeq 1.1T_c$, our result suggests that the correlator still has nontrivial peak structure at almost the same position as below $T_c$ with finite width., Comment: Lattice 2002 Nonzero temperature 3pages

We explore the region of small sea quark masses below $m_{PS}/m_V=0.5$ in two-flavor QCD using a mean-field improved clover quark action and an RG-improved gauge action at $a \simeq 0.2$ fm on $12^3 \times 24$ and $16^3 \times 24$ lattices. We find that instability of the standard BiCGStab algorithm at small quark masses can be mostly removed by the BiCGStab(DS-$L$) algorithm, which employs $L$-th minimal residual polynomials with a dynamical selection of $L$. We also find singular spikes of $\Delta H$ in the HMC algorithm at moderate values of $\Delta\tau$. Nature of the spike is studied. We also study finite-size effects and chiral properties of meson masses., Comment: 3 pages, 4 figures, Lattice2002(spectrum)