Search

We show the existence of strong (anti)correlations between the topological hot spots and the local values of the trace of the Polyakov loop in $2+1$ flavor QCD with physical quark mass, in the vicinity of the crossover transition corresponding to the simultaneous restoration of chiral symmetry and deconfinement. Using sophisticated lattice techniques, we have carefully identified the topological hot spots using quark zero modes and measured the short-distance fluctuations of the Polyakov loop about them, showing how the latter is repelled quite strongly around the peak of the zero modes. Though we could explain some aspects of these correlations within the instanton-dyon picture, our work sets the stage for a larger goal towards a systematic study of the role of different topological species that interact with the Polyakov loop, establishing the strong connection between topology and confinement., Comment: The final published version with a few references updated

In this work we address the question of how well the chiral crossover transition can be understood in terms of a noninteracting hadron resonance gas model. Using the latest results on the variation of hadron masses as a function of the pion mass from lattice quantum chromodynamics, we study the temperature dependence of the renormalized chiral condensate in 2+1 flavor QCD. Furthermore, we suggest a better criterion to estimate of the pseudocritical temperature, which gives $T_c = 161.2 \pm 1.7$ MeV, which is much improved compared to all the earlier results within the hadron resonance gas model or chiral perturbation theory. For the curvature of the pseudocritical line we find $\kappa_2 = 0.0203(7)$, which is in very good agreement with continuum extrapolated lattice results., Comment: v2: published version

We study the bottomonium screening masses in a 2+1 flavor QCD medium on the lattice using the Highly Improved Staggered Quark(HISQ) discretization for the quarks. We focus on a wide temperature range in the region $350~{\rm MeV}\le T < 1000 ~{\rm MeV}$, and perform our calculations on three different lattice spacings to control the lattice cut-off effects, corresponding to temporal lattice extent of $N_\tau=8,10,12$. From a detailed study of the temperature dependence of screening masses we conclude that while the $\eta_b(1S)$ and $\Upsilon(1S)$ states melt at $T>500$ MeV, the scalar and axial-vector states $\chi_{b0}(1P)$ and $h_b(1P)$ melt already at $T>350$ MeV., Comment: 6 pages, RevTEX, 3 figures, matches the published version

Chirality transfer between fermions and gauge fields plays a crucial role for understanding the dynamics of anomalous transport phenomena such as the Chiral Magnetic Effect. In this proceeding we present a first principles study of these processes based on classical-statistical real-time lattice simulations of strongly coupled QED $(e^2N_f=64)$. Our simulations demonstrate that a chirality imbalance in the fermion sector triggers chiral plasma instabilities in the gauge field sector, which ultimately lead to the generation of long range helical magnetic fields via a self-similar turbulent cascade of the magnetic helicity., Quark Matter 2019 conference proceeding

We present new results on up to sixth-order cumulants of net baryon-number fluctuations at small values of the baryon chemical potential, μB, obtained in lattice QCD calculations with physical values of light and strange quark masses. Representing the Taylor expansions of higher-order cumulants in terms of the ratio of the two lowest-order cumulants, MB/σB2=χ1B(T,μB)/χ2B(T,μB), allows for a parameter-free comparison with data on net proton-number cumulants obtained by the STAR Collaboration in the Beam Energy Scan at RHIC. We show that recent high-statistics data on skewness and kurtosis ratios of net proton-number distributions, obtained at a beam energy sNN=54.4 GeV, agree well with lattice QCD results on cumulants of net baryon-number fluctuations close to the pseudocritical temperature, Tpc(μB), for the chiral transition in QCD. We also present first results from a next-to-leading-order expansion of fifth- and sixth-order cumulants on the line of the pseudocritical temperatures.

We present a first principles study of chiral plasma instabilities and the onset of chiral turbulence in QED plasmas far from equilibrium. By performing classical-statistical lattice simulations of the microscopic theory, we show that the generation of strong helical magnetic fields from a helicity imbalance in the fermion sector proceeds via three distinct phases. During the initial linear instability regime the helicity imbalance of the fermion sector causes an exponential growth(damping) of magnetic field modes with right(left) handed polarization, for which we extract the characteristic growth (damping) rates. Secondary growth of unstable modes accelerates the helicity transfer from fermions to gauge fields and ultimately leads to the emergence of a self-similar scaling regime characteristic of decaying turbulence, where magnetic helicity is efficiently transferred to macroscopic length scales. Within this turbulent regime the evolution of magnetic helicity spectrum can be described by an infrared power-spectrum with spectral exponent $\kappa$ and dynamical scaling exponents $\alpha,\beta$, which we determine from our simulations., Comment: published in Physical Review Letters, 13 pages, 9 figures (incl. supplemental material). Details of lattice implementation and numerical analysis strategy significantly expanded

We study the chiral condensate for 2 + 1 flavor QCD with physical quarks within a non-interacting Hadron Resonance Gas (HRG) model. By including the latest information on the mass variation of the hadrons concerning the light quark mass, from lattice QCD and chiral perturbation theory, we show that it is possible to quite accurately account for the chiral crossover transition even within a conventional HRG model. We have calculated a pseudocritical temperature Tc=161.2±1.6 MeV and the curvature of crossover curve κ2=0.0203(7). These are in very good agreement with the latest continuum extrapolated results obtained from lattice QCD studies. We also discuss the limitations of extending such calculations toward the chiral limit. Furthermore, we study the effects of non-resonant hadron interactions within the HRG model and its consequences for the chiral transition in the regime of dense baryonic matter where lattice QCD results are not currently available.

We study the vacuum topology of 2+1 flavor QCD above the chiral crossover transition, at $T \lesssim 1.2~T_c$, on lattices of size $32^3\times 8$. Since overlap fermions have exact chiral symmetry and an index theorem even on a finite lattice, we use them to detect the topological content of gauge fields generated using domain wall fermion discretization for quarks. We further use different periodicity phases along the temporal direction for the valence overlap quarks, which allows us to probe different topological structures present in the gauge field ensembles, through its zero modes. This procedure provides strong evidences that fermion zero-modes can be quantitatively understood to arise due to different species of instanton-dyons. We estimate their relative abundances from the Dirac-eigenvalue density and resolve the so called "topological clusters" via multi-parameter fits to their density, providing therefore an understanding of the interactions between instanton-dyons. The typical separation between dyons we obtain, is $\sim 0.3$ fm. Surprisingly, it emerges out from this study that a semi-classical description of the fermionic zero modes in the QCD vacuum is quite accurate just above $T_c$., 14 pages, 11 Figures

We present results for the QCD Equation of State at non-zero chemical potentials corresponding to the conserved charges in QCD using Taylor expansion upto sixth order in the baryon number, electric charge and strangeness chemical potentials. The latter two are constrained by the strangeness neutrality and a fixed electric charge to baryon number ratio. In our calculations, we use the Highly Improved Staggered Quarks (HISQ) discretization scheme at physical quark masses and at different values of the lattice spacings to control lattice cut-off effects. Furthermore we calculate the pressure along lines of constant energy density, which serve as proxies for the freeze-out conditions and discuss their dependence on μ B , which is necessary for hydrodynamic modelling near freezeout. We also provide an estimate of the radius of convergence of the Taylor series from the 6th order coefficients which provides a new constraint on the location of the critical end-point in the T - μ B plane of the QCD phase diagram.

We report our study on the properties of the topological structures present in the QCD medium around the critical temperature $T_c$. We use dynamical domain wall fermion configurations on lattices of size $32^3 \times 8$ to detect the topological structures through the zero and near-zero modes of the overlap operator. We show that the properties of the zero modes of the QCD Dirac operator agree well with that of calorons with non-trivial holonomy. We also show how the zero modes move around when changing the fermionic boundary conditions, and how the locality of the solutions also depends on the boundary conditions. This supports the presence of instanton-dyons in the hot QCD medium around $T_c$, where the distance between dyons control the shape and extent of the zero modes.

Recent progress and the latest results on the bulk thermodynamic properties of QCD matter from lattice are reviewed. In particular, I will stress upon the fact that lattice techniques are now entering into precision era where they can provide us with new insights on even the microscopic degrees of freedom in different phases of QCD. I will discuss some instances, from the recent studies of topological fluctuations and screening masses. The progress towards understanding the effects of anomalous $U_A(1)$ symmetry on the chiral crossover transition and transport properties of QCD matter will also be discussed., Comment: 16 pages, 16 figures. Proceedings of the 36th Annual International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory - LATTICE2018, Michigan State University, v2: Minor additions, typos corrected

We study the topological susceptibility in 2+1 flavor QCD above the chiral crossover transition temperature using Highly Improved Staggered Quark action and several lattice spacings, corresponding to temporal extent of the lattice, $N_\tau=6,8,10$ and $12$. We observe very distinct temperature dependences of the topological susceptibility in the ranges above and below $250$ MeV. While for temperatures above $250$ MeV, the dependence is found to be consistent with dilute instanton gas approximation, at lower temperatures the fall-off of topological susceptibility is milder. We discuss the consequence of our results for cosmology wherein we estimate the bounds on the axion decay constant and the oscillation temperature if indeed the QCD axion is a possible dark matter candidate., Comment: 19 pages and 7 figures; v2: A new figure, a few references and minor comments added; published version

The nature of chiral phase transition for QCD with two light quark flavors is not yet completely resolved. This is primarily because one has to understand whether or not the anomalous U(1) symmetry in the flavor sector is effectively restored along with the chiral symmetry. 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. 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. For the same reasons we also compare our results from the continuum extrapolated results of the QCD Dirac spectrum obtained from a different lattice discretization called Highly Improved Staggered Quarks. Our studies 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 and related to the physics of confinement and chiral symmetry breaking.

We present results for pseudo-critical temperatures of QCD chiral crossovers at zero and non-zero values of baryon (B), strangeness (S), electric charge (Q), and isospin (I) chemical potentials μX=B,Q,S,I. The results were obtained using lattice QCD calculations carried out with two degenerate up and down dynamical quarks and a dynamical strange quark, with quark masses corresponding to physical values of pion and kaon masses in the continuum limit. By parameterizing pseudo-critical temperatures as Tc(μX)=Tc(0)[1−κ2X(μX/Tc(0))2−κ4X(μX/Tc(0))4], we determined κ2X and κ4X from Taylor expansions of chiral observables in μX. We obtained a precise result for Tc(0)=(156.5±1.5) MeV. For analogous thermal conditions at the chemical freeze-out of relativistic heavy-ion collisions, i.e., μS(T,μB) and μQ(T,μB) fixed from strangeness-neutrality and isospin-imbalance, we found κ2B=0.012(4) and κ4B=0.000(4). For μB≲300 MeV, the chemical freeze-out takes place in the vicinity of the QCD phase boundary, which coincides with the lines of constant energy density of 0.42(6)GeV/fm3 and constant entropy density of 3.7(5)fm−3.

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.

We review recent results on the phase structure of QCD and bulk QCD thermodynamics. In particular we discuss how universal critical scaling related to spontaneous breaking of the chiral symmetry manifests itself in recent lattice QCD simulations and how the knowledge on non-universal scaling parameter can be utilized in the exploration of the QCD phase diagram. We also show how various (generalized) susceptibilities can be employed to characterize properties of QCD matter at low and hight temperatures, related to deconfining aspects of the QCD transition. Finally, we address the input these lattice QCD calculation can provide for our under standing of the matter created in heavy ion collisions and in particular on the freeze-out conditions met in the hydrodynamic evolution of this matter., 28 pages, 10 figures, invited review

We present a first principles approach to study the Chiral Magnetic Effect during the pre-equilibrium stage of a heavy-ion collision. We discuss the dynamics of the Chiral Magnetic Effect and Chiral Magnetic Wave based on real-time lattice simulations with dynamical (Wilson and Overlap) fermions simultaneously coupled to color and electromagnetic fields. While for light quarks we observe a dissipation-less transport of charges as in anomalous hydrodynamics, we demonstrate that for heavier quarks the effects of explicit chiral symmetry breaking lead to a significant reduction of the associated currents., Comment: accepted for publication in Nucl .Phys. A (Proceedings for Quark Matter 2017). Title changed compared to v1, as to avoid confusion with arXiv:1606.00342 [hep-ph], references added; 4 pages, 2 figures

We present a first-principle study of anomaly induced transport phenomena by performing real-time lattice simulations with dynamical fermions coupled simultaneously to non-Abelian $SU(N_c)$ and Abelian $U(1)$ gauge fields. Investigating the behavior of vector and axial currents during a sphaleron transition in the presence of an external magnetic field, we demonstrate how the interplay of the Chiral magnetic (CME) and Chiral separation effect (CSE) lead to the formation of a propagating wave. We further analyze the dependence of the magnitude of the induced vector current and the propagation of the wave on the amount of explicit chiral symmetry breaking due to finite quark mass., 5 pages, 3 figures, references updated, journal version

The magnitude of the UA(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 UA(1) near the chiral crossover temperature, Tc. 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 323 × 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.

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., 4 Pages, 3 Figures, Proceedings of Quark Matter 2015, Kobe, Japan, version accepted for publication in Nucl. Phys. A

We present a real-time lattice approach to study the non-equilibrium dynamics of vector and axial charges in $SU(N) \times U(1)$ gauge theories. Based on a classical description of the non-Abelian and Abelian gauge fields, we include dynamical fermions and develop operator definitions for (improved) Wilson and overlap fermions that allow us to study real-time manifestations of the axial anomaly from first principles. We present a first application of this approach to anomalous transport phenomena such as the Chiral Magnetic Effect (CME) and Chiral Separation Effect (CSE) by studying the dynamics of fermions during and after a $SU(N)$ sphaleron transition in the presence of a $U(1)$ magnetic field. We investigate the fermion mass and magnetic field dependence of the suggested signatures of the CME and CSE and point out some important aspects which need to be accounted for in the macroscopic description of anomalous transport phenomena., Comment: 21 pages, 13 figures. RevTeX. V2: small clarifications and added references. To be published in Phys. Rev. D

Lattice QCD studies on fluctuations and correlations of charm quantum number have established that deconfinement of charm degrees of freedom sets in around the chiral crossover temperature, $T_c$, i.e. charm degrees of freedom carrying fractional baryonic charge start to appear. By reexamining those same lattice QCD data we show that, in addition to the contributions from quark-like excitations, the partial pressure of charm degrees of freedom may still contain significant contributions from open-charm meson and baryon-like excitations associated with integral baryonic charges for temperatures up to $1.2~ T_c$. Charm quark-quasiparticles become the dominant degrees of freedom for temperatures $T>1.2~ T_c$., 5 pages, 3 Figures, v2: Fig. 3 simplified, published version

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 in QCD. 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 $0.223(8)\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{fm}$ and their density is $0.147(7)\text{ }\text{ }{\mathrm{fm}}^{\ensuremath{-}4}$.

We pursue the idea of adding the naive $\mu N$ term, where $\mu$ is the quark chemical potential and $N$ is the conserved quark number, to the lattice QCD action. While computations of higher order susceptibilities, required for estimating the location of the QCD critical point, need a lot fewer number of quark propagators at any order as a result, it has its problem. We discuss a solution, and examine if it works., Comment: Proceedings for the 9th International Workshop on Critical Point and Onset of Deconfinement - CPOD2014, 17-12 November 2014, ZiF, University of Bielefeld, Germany

From the analysis of the lattice data on fluctuations and correlations of charm we conclude that open charm meson and baryon-like excitations exist above the QCD crossover temperature, and in fact are the dominant degrees of freedom for thermodynamics in the vicinity of the transition. Charm quarks become the dominant charm degrees of freedom only for temperatures T>200 MeV., Talk presented at Quark Matter 2015, LaTeX, 4 pages, uses nupha_ecrc.sty, ecrc.sty

A remarkable progress has been made in the understanding of the hot and dense QCD matter using lattice gauge theory. The issues which are very well understood as well those which require both conceptual as well as algorithmic advances are highlighted. The recent lattice results on QCD thermodynamics which are important in the context of the heavy ion experiments are reviewed. Instances of greater synergy between the lattice theory and the experiments in the recent years are discussed where lattice results could be directly used as benchmarks for experiments and results from the experiments would be a crucial input for lattice computations., 26 pages, almost matches the published version

In the discussion of hadronization at or close to the freeze-out curve statistical (hadron resonance gas) models play an important role. In particular, in the charmonium sector, regeneration models are considered which rely on the fact that charmonium states can form again already at temperatures well above the QCD transition or hadronization temperature. An important ingredient in these considerations is the regeneration or hadronization of open charm states. In this talk we report on a lattice QCD analysis of correlations of open strange and charm with other conserved quantum numbers like the net baryon number and electric charge. We analyze the temperature range in which an uncorrelated hadron resonance gas (HRG) provides an adequate description of such correlations. This limits the range of validity of HRG based thermodynamics in open flavor channels and provides an estimate for the melting temperature of heavy-light hadrons., Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, Proceedings of XXIV International Conference on Ultrarelativistic Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions (Quark Matter 2014), May 19-24, 2014, Darmstadt(Germany)

We compare lattice QCD results for appropriate combinations of net strangeness fluctuations and their correlations with net baryon number fluctuations with predictions from two hadron resonance gas (HRG) models having different strange hadron content. The conventionally used HRG model based on experimentally established strange hadrons fails to describe the lattice QCD results in the hadronic phase close to the QCD crossover. Supplementing the conventional HRG with additional, experimentally uncharted strange hadrons predicted by quark model calculations and observed in lattice QCD spectrum calculations leads to good descriptions of strange hadron thermodynamics below the QCD crossover. We show that the thermodynamic presence of these additional states gets imprinted in the yields of the ground-state strange hadrons leading to a systematic 5--8 MeV decrease of the chemical freeze-out temperatures of ground-state strange baryons., Comment: version published in Physical Review Letters

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., Presented at the 31st International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory (Lattice 2013), 29 July - 3 August 2013, Mainz, Germany

Appropriate combinations of up to fourth order cumulants of net strangeness fluctuations and their correlations with net baryon number and electric charge fluctuations, obtained from lattice QCD calculations, have been used to probe the strangeness carrying degrees of freedom at high temperatures. For temperatures up to the chiral crossover separate contributions of strange mesons and baryons can be well described by an uncorrelated gas of hadrons. Such a description breaks down in the chiral crossover region, suggesting that the deconfinement of strangeness takes place at the chiral crossover. On the other hand, the strangeness carrying degrees of freedom inside the quark gluon plasma can be described by a weakly interacting gas of quarks only for temperatures larger than twice the chiral crossover temperature. In the intermediate temperature window these observables show considerably richer structures, indicative of the strongly interacting nature of the quark gluon plasma., Published version

A new lattice action is proposed for the overlap Dirac matrix with nonzero chemical potential. It is shown to preserve the full chiral invariance for all values of lattice spacing exactly. It is further demonstrated to arise in the domain wall formalism by coupling the chemical potential count only to the physically relevant wall modes., Comment: 5 pages, contribution to "Extreme QCD" workshop, 21-23 August 2012, Washington DC, USA

We investigate the possibility of coupling a chemical potential only to the physical chiral fermions on the lattice starting from the many body state description of overlap fermions. After developing the formalism for a chiral gauge theory, we focus our attention on the case of free fermions coupled to a vector like chemical potential and discuss the issue of zero temperature divergences., 17 pages, 3 figures, minor changes to v1, version to appear in JHEP

We propose a lattice action for the overlap Dirac matrix with nonzero chemical potential which is shown to preserve the chiral invariance on the lattice exactly. We further demonstrate it to arise from the Domain wall by letting the chemical potential count only the physically relevant wall modes., Comment: 4 pages, RevTeX

We compute the quark number susceptibilities in two flavor QCD for staggered fermions by adding the chemical potential as a Lagrange multiplier for the point-split number density term. Since lesser number of quark propagators are required at any order, this method leads to faster computations. We propose a subtraction procedure to remove the inherent undesired lattice terms and check that it works well by comparing our results with the existing ones where the elimination of these terms is analytically guaranteed. We also show that the ratios of susceptibilities are robust, opening a door for better estimates of location of the QCD critical point through the computation of the tenth and twelfth order baryon number susceptibilities without significant additional computational overload., Comment: 10 pages, 12 figures

We describe an optical fiber based setup for performing polarization resolved magneto-optical spectroscopy measurements under low temperatures (similar to 4 K) and high magnetic fields (similar to 8 T). The measurements are performed in a windowless helium Dewar. Circularly polarized light is produced inside the Dewar by inserting the polarizing elements between the fiber end and the sample. Photoconductivity spectra of a GaAs/AlGaAs multiquantum-well sample have been measured over the photon energy range of 1.5-1.7 eV in left and right circularly polarized light under crossed magnetic and electric fields. It is shown that reversing the direction of magnetic field produces the same spectral changes as caused by changing the direction of circular polarization with the optical components. (C) 2010 [doi:10.1063/1.3462977]

Using both perturbation theory in the Euclidean formalism as well as the non-perturbative Fujikawa's method, we verify that the chiral anomaly equation remains unaffected in continuum QCD in the presence of nonzero chemical potential, \mu. We extend our considerations to lattice fermions with exact chiral symmetry and discuss the consequences for the recent Bloch-Wettig proposal for the Dirac operator at finite chemical potential. We propose a new simpler method of incorporating \mu., Comment: Talk presented at the XXVII International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory, July 26-31, 2009, Peking University, Beijing, China; 7 pages, 3 figures

Using perturbation theory in the Euclidean (imaginary time) formalism as well as the non-perturbative Fujikawa method, we verify that the chiral anomaly equation remains unaffected in the presence of nonzero chemical potential, $\mu$. We extend our considerations to fermions with exact chiral symmetry on the lattice and discuss the consequences for the recent Bloch-Wettig proposal for the Dirac operator at finite chemical potential. We propose a new simpler method of incorporating $\mu$ and compare it with the Bloch-Wettig idea., Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures,some typos corrected, a better proof for the \mu independence of anomaly is given in section IIB, v4: the published version

Studying various thermodynamic quantities for the free domain wall fermions for both finite and infinite fifth dimensional extent N_5, we find that the lattice corrections are minimum for $N_T\geq10$ for both energy density and susceptibility, for its irrelevant parameter M in the range 1.45-1.50. The correction terms are, however, quite large for small lattice sizes of $N_T\leq8$. We propose modifications of the domain wall operator, as well as the overlap operator, to reduce the finite cut-off effects to within 10% of the continuum results of the thermodynamic quantities for the currently used N_T=6-8 lattices. Incorporating chemical potential, we show that \mu^2 divergences are absent for a large class of such domain wall fermion actions although the chiral symmetry is broken for $\mu\neq0$., Comment: 11 pages, 15 figures included

The thermodynamics of massless ideal gas of overlap quarks has been investigated both analytically and numerically for both zero and nonzero baryon chemical potential. Any \mu^2-divergence is shown analytically to be absent for a class of actions with nonzero chemical potential. All such actions are shown to violate chiral invariance. While the parameter M can be shown to be irrelevant in the continuum limit, as expected, it is shown numerically that the continuum limit can be reached with relatively coarser lattices for certain ranges of M. Numerical limitations of the existing method of introduction of chemical potential are demonstrated. Finally we also show that the energy density for the massive overlap fermions has the correct continuum limit., Comment: 12 Pages, RevTex4, 12 Figures (included), Sections II, III A. reorganised, new Appendix added, more precise results in fig. 3, some new references added, version to be published in Physical Review D

The thermodynamics of massless ideal gas of overlap quarks has been investigated numerically for both zero and nonzero baryon chemical potential $\mu$. While the parameter M has been shown to be irrelevant in the continuum limit, it is shown numerically that the continuum limit can be reached with relatively coarser lattices for certain range of M. Numerical limitation of the existing method of introduction of chemical potential in the overlap formalism is discussed. We have also studied the energy density of free domain wall fermions in the absence of $\mu$ and estimated the extent of lattice in the fifth dimension $L_5$ for which the overlap results are recovered. Interestingly, this value of $L_5$ is also minimum for the same range of M found in the overlap case., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, to appear in the proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Ultra-Relativistic Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions: Quark Matter 2008 (QM2008)

Quark number susceptibility on the lattice, obtained by merely adding a $\mu N$ term with $\mu$ as the chemical potential and $N$ as the conserved quark number, has a quadratic divergence in the cut-off $a$. We show that such a divergence already exist for free fermions with a cut-off regulator. While one can eliminate it in the free lattice theory by suitably modifying the action, as is popularly done, it can simply be subtracted off as well. Computations of higher order susceptibilities, needed for estimating the location of the QCD critical point, then need a lot fewer number of quark propagators at any order. We show that this method of divergence removal works in the interacting theory., Comment: Published version, with added discussion of the results and the appendix removed