QCD at Zero Baryon Density and the Polyakov Loop Paradox

Physics – High Energy Physics – High Energy Physics - Lattice

Scientific paper

Rate now

  [ 0.00 ] – not rated yet Voters 0   Comments 0

Details

21 pages, 7 figures

Scientific paper

10.1103/PhysRevD.73.114512

We compare the grand canonical partition function at fixed chemical potential mu with the canonical partition function at fixed baryon number B, formally and by numerical simulations at mu=0 and B=0 with four flavours of staggered quarks. We verify that the free energy densities are equal in the thermodynamic limit, and show that they can be well described by the hadron resonance gas at T < T_c and by the free fermion gas at T>T_c. Small differences between the two ensembles, for thermodynamic observables characterising the deconfinement phase transition, vanish with increasing lattice size. These differences are solely caused by contributions of non-zero baryon density sectors, which are exponentially suppressed with increasing volume. The Polyakov loop shows a different behaviour: for all temperatures and volumes, its expectation value is exactly zero in the canonical formulation, whereas it is always non-zero in the commonly used grand-canonical formulation. We clarify this paradoxical difference, and show that the non-vanishing Polyakov loop expectation value is due to contributions of non-zero triality states, which are not physical, because they give zero contribution to the partition function.

No associations

LandOfFree

Say what you really think

Search LandOfFree.com for scientists and scientific papers. Rate them and share your experience with other people.

Rating

QCD at Zero Baryon Density and the Polyakov Loop Paradox does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with QCD at Zero Baryon Density and the Polyakov Loop Paradox, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and QCD at Zero Baryon Density and the Polyakov Loop Paradox will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

     

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-122994

  Search
All data on this website is collected from public sources. Our data reflects the most accurate information available at the time of publication.