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We present lattice QCD results for mesonic screening masses in the temperature range 140 MeV $\lesssim T \lesssim$ 2500 MeV. Our calculations were carried out using (2+1)-flavors of the Highly Improved Staggered Quark (HISQ) action, with a physical value for the strange quark mass and two values of the light quark mass corresponding to pion masses of 160 MeV and 140 MeV. Continuum-extrapolated results were obtained using calculations with a variety of lattice spacings corresponding to temporal lattice extents $N_\tau = 6 - 16$. We discuss the implications of these results for the effective restoration of various symmetries in the high temperature phase of QCD, as well as the approach toward the perturbative limit., Comment: Corrected some errors pertaining to the discussion on emergent SU(2)CS and SU(4) symmetries

The region of the Columbia plot with two light quark flavors is not yet conclusively understood. Non-perturbative effects, e.g. the magnitude of the anomalous U(1) axial symmetry breaking, decides on the nature of the phase transition in this region. We report on our study of this region of the Columbia plot using lattice techniques. We use gauge field ensembles generated within the Highly Improved Staggered Quark discretization scheme, with the strange quark mass fixed at its physical value and the light quark mass varied such that $m_l=m_s/27$ and $m_s/40$, where $m_l=m_s/27$ corresponds to the physical light quark mass. We study the eigenvalue spectrum of QCD using the overlap Dirac operator on these gauge field ensembles at finite temperature around the chiral transition temperature $T_c$, as the light quark masses approach the chiral limit, and infer about the fate of the anomalous $U_A(1)$ symmetry breaking.

The nature of chiral phase transition for two flavor QCD is an interesting but unresolved problem. One of the most intriguing issues is whether or not the anomalous U(1) symmetry in the flavor sector is effectively restored along with the chiral symmetry. This may determine the universality class of the chiral phase transition. Since the physics near the chiral phase transition is essentially non-perturbative, we employ first principles lattice techniques to address this issue. We use overlap fermions, which have exact chiral symmetry on the lattice, to probe the anomalous U(1) symmetry violation of 2+1 flavor dynamical QCD configurations with domain wall fermions. The latter also optimally preserves chiral and flavor symmetries on the lattice, since it is known that the remnant chiral symmetry of the light quarks influences the scaling of the chiral condensate in the crossover transition region. We observe that the anomalous U(1) is not effectively restored in the chiral crossover region. We perform a systematic study of the finite size and cut-off effects since the signals of U(1) violation are sensitive to it. We also provide a glimpse of the microscopic topological structures of the QCD medium that are responsible for the strongly interacting nature of the quark gluon plasma phase. We study the effect of these microscopic constituents through our first calculations for the topological susceptibility of QCD at finite temperature, which could be a crucial input for the equation of state for anomalous hydrodynamics., Comment: 4 Pages, 3 Figures, Proceedings of Quark Matter 2015, Kobe, Japan, version accepted for publication in Nucl. Phys. A

The magnitude of the $U_A(1)$ symmetry breaking is expected to affect the nature of $N_f=2$ QCD chiral phase transition. The explicit breaking of chiral symmetry due to realistic light quark mass is small, so it is important to use chiral fermions on the lattice to understand the effect of $U_A(1)$ near the chiral crossover temperature, $T_c$. We report our latest results for the eigenvalue spectrum of 2+1 flavour QCD with dynamical Mobius domain wall fermions at finite temperature probed using the overlap operator on $32^3\times 8$ lattice. We check how sensitive the low-lying eigenvalues are to the sea-light quark mass. We also present a comparison with the earlier independent results with domain wall fermions., Comment: 7 pages, 6 Figures, Proceedings of the 33rd International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory, Kobe, Japan

We investigate the low-lying eigenmodes of the Dirac matrix with the aim to gain more insight into the temperature dependence of the anomalous $U_A(1)$ symmetry. We use the overlap operator to probe dynamical QCD configurations generated with (2+1)-flavors of highly improved staggered quarks. We find no evidence of a gap opening up in the infrared region of the eigenvalue spectrum even at $1.5\,T_c$, $T_c$ being the chiral crossover temperature. Instead, we observe an accumulation of near-zero eigenmodes. We argue that these near-zero eigenmodes are primarily responsible for the anomalous breaking of the axial symmetry still being effective. At $1.5\,T_c$, these near-zero eigenmodes remain localized and their distribution is consistent with the dilute instanton gas picture. At this temperature, the average size of the instantons is $0.223(8)\,\text{fm}$ and their density is $0.147(7)\,\text{fm}^{-4}$., Comment: 15 pages, 19 figures

In this project we study the effect of the $U_A(1)$ anomaly for (2+1)-flavour QCD at high temperature. We apply the overlap operator as a tool to probe the topological properties of gauge field configurations which have been generated within the Highly Improved Staggered Quark (HISQ) discretization scheme on lattices of size $32^3\times 8$ with $m_l/m_s=1/20$, commonly used for the study of QCD thermodynamics. Although we have at present, only results for one value of the quark masses and thus cannot monitor the change of the eigenvalue distributions with the light quark mass, the distribution of the low-lying eigenvalues of the overlap operator suggests that the $U_A(1)$ is not restored effectively even at 1.5 times the pseudo critical temperature. The corresponding low-lying eigenmodes show localization properties., Comment: Presented at the 31st International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory (Lattice 2013), 29 July - 3 August 2013, Mainz, Germany

We present results on the thermodynamic and continuum limit of meson screening masses in the deconfined phase, using standard staggered and non-perturbatively clover-improved Wilson fermions in the quenched approximation with light quark masses. For two temperatures, 1.5 Tc and 3.0 Tc, it is found that on finite lattices screening masses differ between the actions. We study if both actions reproduce the same masses in the continuum by employing different methods of extrapolation to the thermodynamic and continuum limit., Comment: 7 pages, 10 figures, to appear in the Proceedings of the 31st International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory, July 29 - August 3, 2013, Mainz, Germany

Symmetries play a distinctive role at the high temperature phase transition in QCD. Therefore the spectrum of screening masses has been investigated with emphasis on taste breaking. Although taste violation is an UV effect the relevant operators could be temperature dependent. We have studied the meson screening masses in the temperature range between 140 MeV to 550 MeV. The computation has been performed using dynamical N_f = 2+1 gauge field configurations generated with the p4 staggered action. For temperatures below the transition an agreement with the prediction of staggered chiral perturbation theory has been found and no temperature effect can be observed on the taste violation. Above the transition the taste splitting still shows an O(a^2) behavior but with a temperature dependent slope., Comment: 7 pages, Proceedings of 30th International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory, June 24-29, 2012, Cairns, Australia

The breaking of the taste symmetry is studied in the temperature range between 140 MeV to 550 MeV. In order to investigate this violation we have calculated the screening masses of the various taste states fitting the exponential decay of the spatial correlators. The computation has been performed using dynamical Nf = 2+1 gauge field configurations generated with the p4 staggered action along the Line of Constant Physics (LCP) defined by a pion mass $m_\pi$ of approximately 220 MeV and the kaon mass $m_K$ equals 500 MeV. For temperatures below the transition an agreement with the predictions of the staggered chiral perturbation theory has been found and no temperature effect can be observed on the taste violation. Above the transition the taste splitting still shows an O(a^2) behavior but with a temperature dependent slope. In addition to the analysis done for the pion multiplet we have performed an analogous computation for the light-strange and strange mesons and also looked at the scalar, vector and axial vector channels to understand how the multiplets split at finite temperature. Finally the temperature dependence of the pion decay constant $f_{\pi}$ is investigated to get further information about the chiral symmetry restoration., Comment: 14 pages, 27 figures, 4 tables

We study QCD with 2+1 flavors at nonzero temperature and nonzero chemical potential. We present preliminary results obtained from lattice calculations performed with an improved staggered fermions action (p4-action) on lattice with temporal extent N_t = 4 on a line of constant physics with the strange quark mass adjusted to its physical value and a pion mass of about 220 MeV. We compute at imaginary chemical potential and compare with Taylor expansion results. We focus our study on a range of temperatures 0.94 < T/T_c < 1.08., Comment: 7 pages, 12 figures, talk presented at the XXVIII International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory (Lattice 2010), June 14-19, 2010, Villasimius, Sardinia, Italy

The Hypercube operator determines a variant of the approximate, truncated perfect fermion action. In this pilot study we are going to report on first experiences in dynamical QCD simulations with the Hypercube fermions. We apply this formulation in an investigation of the finite temperature transition for two flavours. On lattices of size $8^3\times 4$ we explore the phase diagram. Physical scales are estimated from pseudoscalar and vector meson masses obtained on $8^3\times 16$ lattices. We observe the presence of a metastability region but do not find evidence for an Aoki phase. The Hypercube operator allows us to simulate at ratios of pseudoscalar to vector meson masses at least as small as 0.8 at the thermal crossover at $N_t=4$, which renders this formulation cheaper than the Wilson like fermions., Comment: 7 pages, 8 figures, talk presented at Lattice 2006 (High temperature and density)

We study the renormalized free energy of a heavy quark anti-quark pair in the different colour channels in full QCD at finite temperature. Similarities and differences to the quenched case are discussed and the temperature dependence as well as their short distance behavior are analyzed. The asymptotic large distance behavior of the free energy is used to define the non-perturbatively renormalized Polyakov loop which is well behaved in the continuum limit., Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, ptptex, Talk at Finite Density QCD at Nara, Japan, 10-12 July 2003

We discuss the phase structure and the equation of state for QCD at non-zero temperature and density. Derivatives of $\ln Z$ with respect to quark chemical potential $\mu_q$ up to fourth order are calculated for 2-flavor QCD, enabling estimates of the pressure, quark number density and associated susceptibilities as functions of $\mu_q$ via a Taylor series expansion. Also, the phase transition line for 2 and 3-flavor QCD and the critical endpoint in the $(T, \mu_q)$ plane are investigated in the low density regime., Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, ptptex, Talk at Finite Density QCD at Nara, Japan, 10-12 July 2003

We report on a lattice investigation of improved quenched Wilson fermions above and below the confinement-deconfinement phase transition. Results on meson screening masses as well as spatial wave functions are presented. Moreover, the meson dispersion relation is studied. Below the critical temperature we do not observe any significant temperature effect while above $T_c$ the data are consistent with a leading free quark behavior., Comment: LaTeX, 27 pages, 8 figures

Heavy quark potentials are investigated at high temperatures. The temperature range covered by the analysis extends from $T$ values just below the deconfinement temperature up to about $4 T_c$ in the deconfined phase. We simulated the pure gauge sector of QCD on lattices with temporal extents of 4, 6 and 8 with spatial volumes of $32^3$. On the smallest lattice a tree level improved action was employed while in the other two cases the standard Wilson action was used. Below $T_c$ we find a temperature dependent logarithmic term contributing to the confinement potential and observe a string tension which decreases with rising temperature but retains a finite value at the deconfinement transition. Above $T_c$ the potential is Debye-screened, however simple perturbative predictions do not apply., Comment: 20 pages, 9 figures

The separation of a heavy quark and antiquark pair leads to the formation of a tube of flux, or string, which should break in the presence of light quark-antiquark pairs. This expected zero temperature phenomenon has proven elusive in simulations of lattice QCD. We present simulation results that show that the string does break in the confining phase at nonzero temperature., Comment: 11 pages RevTeX, including 4 encapsulated Postscript figures. version2: minor corrections to references

We study the quark mass dependence of various response functions, which contribute to chiral susceptibilities and the specific heat in the staggered fermion formulation of two-flavour QCD. This yields information about the critical exponents $\alpha$, $\beta$ and $\delta$. In the case of the chiral susceptibility, obtained as derivative of the chiral order parameter with respect to the quark mass, we calculate all contributions. This allows to construct a cumulant of the order parameter, which is a scaling function and yields a direct determination of the critical exponent $\delta$. All our results are consistent with a second order phase transition., Comment: 16 pages (TeX file) + 7 figures (appended as ps-files), uuencoded, Bielefeld preprint, BI-TP 94/29, June 1994