The 34th International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory (Lattice 2016)

Continuum limit and universality of the Columbia plot

25 Jul 2016, 15:15

20m

Building 32 Room 1015 (Highfield Campus, University of Southampton)

Talk Nonzero Temperature and Density Nonzero Temperature and Density

Speaker

Dr Philippe de Forcrand (ETH Zurich & CERN)

Description

In its lower left corner, the Columbia plot indicates a first-order finite-temperature phase transition, which turns into a crossover as the quark masses increase. The locus of quark masses giving a second-order transition is a feature of continuum QCD, and should be recovered with any fermion discretization. However, numerical evidence has been accumulating, disfavoring universality. We explore this puzzle with 4 degenerate flavors of staggered fermions, thus avoiding any potential problem associated with rooting.