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Title: Thermodynamics of lattice QCD with 2 sextet quarks on N{sub t}=8 lattices

Journal Article · · Physical Review. D, Particles Fields
;  [1]
  1. Department of Energy, Division of High Energy Physics, Washington, DC 20585 (United States) and Department of Physics-TQHN, University of Maryland, 82 Regents Drive, College Park, Maryland 20742 (United States)

We continue our lattice simulations of QCD with 2 flavors of color-sextet quarks as a model for conformal or walking technicolor. A 2-loop perturbative calculation of the {beta} function which describes the evolution of this theory's running coupling constant predicts that it has a second zero at a finite coupling. This nontrivial zero would be an infrared stable fixed point, in which case the theory with massless quarks would be a conformal field theory. However, if the interaction between quarks and antiquarks becomes strong enough that a chiral condensate forms before this IR fixed point is reached, the theory is QCD-like with spontaneously broken chiral symmetry and confinement. However, the presence of the nearby IR fixed point means that there is a range of couplings for which the running coupling evolves very slowly, i.e. it ''walks.'' We are simulating the lattice version of this theory with staggered quarks at finite temperature, studying the changes in couplings at the deconfinement and chiral-symmetry restoring transitions as the temporal extent (N{sub t}) of the lattice, measured in lattice units, is increased. Our earlier results on lattices with N{sub t}=4, 6 show both transitions move to weaker couplings as N{sub t} increases consistent with walking behavior. In this paper we extend these calculations to N{sub t}=8. Although both transitions again move to weaker couplings, the change in the coupling at the chiral transition from N{sub t}=6 to N{sub t}=8 is appreciably smaller than that from N{sub t}=4 to N{sub t}=6. This indicates that at N{sub t}=4, 6 we are seeing strong-coupling effects and that we will need results from N{sub t}>8 to determine if the chiral-transition coupling approaches zero as N{sub t}{yields}{infinity}, as needed for the theory to walk.

OSTI ID:
21607799
Journal Information:
Physical Review. D, Particles Fields, Vol. 84, Issue 7; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.84.074504; (c) 2011 American Institute of Physics; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0556-2821
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English