Related papers: QCD at Large $\theta$ Angle and Axion Cosmology
Using a general Ginzburg-Landau effective Lagrangian, we study the topological structure and low-lying collective modes of dense QCD having both chiral and diquark condensates, for two and three massless flavors. As we found earlier, the…
The chiral symmetry of QCD with two massless quark flavours gets restored in a non-analytic chiral phase transition at finite temperature and zero density. Whether this is a first-order or a second-order transition has not yet been…
We study the thermal transition of QCD with two degenerate light flavours by lattice simulations using $\mathcal{O}(a)$-improved Wilson quarks. Particular emphasis lies on the pattern of chiral symmetry restoration, which we probe via the…
We review the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (NJL) approach to the dynamical breaking of chiral symmetry in Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). The subjects treated in Part I include the vacuum structure of QCD, mass spectra and coupling constants of…
In this proceeding, we discuss the finite-size scaling analysis of the order parameter related to the chiral phase transition in QCD with two massless quarks. We use data obtained in lattice QCD calculations performed with highly improved…
The chiral quark condensate of QCD, which spontaneously breaks the anomalous axial symmetry, gives rise to axionic type global string-wall systems. If a Peccei-Quinn type axion exists in the theory, the axionic strings are in general…
We present results from a comprehensive study of the location of the chiral critical surface, which separates regions of first-order chiral transitions from analytic crossovers, in the bare parameter space of lattice QCD with unimproved…
The QCD axion addresses the strong CP problem and dark matter via the misalignment mechanism, typically requiring a decay constant $f_a\sim \mathcal{O}(10^{12}$ GeV), unless the initial misalignment angle ($\theta_i$) is fine-tuned. This…
The chiral phase transition in QCD at finite chemical potential and temperature can be characterized for small chemical potential by its curvature and the transition temperature. The curvature is accessible to QCD lattice simulations, which…
For quantifying the universal properties of the chiral phase transition in QCD through numerical calculations on a discrete space-time lattice, one needs to perform controlled extrapolations to the continuum and infinite-volume limits…
The axion is one of the more interesting candidates to make the dark matter of the universe, and the axion potential plays a fundamental role in the determination of the dynamics of the axion field. Moreover, the way in which the $U(1)_A$…
The transition is studied by means of a disorder parameter detecting condensation of magnetic monopoles in the vacuum. The deconfining transition is found to coincide with the chiral transition and the susceptibility \rho, related to the…
QCD with three degenerate quark flavours at zero baryon density exhibits a first order thermal phase transition for small quark masses, which changes to a smooth crossover for some critical quark mass m^c_0, i.e. the chiral critical point.…
The vacuum properties of lattice QCD with staggered quarks are investigated by an efficient simulation method. I present data for the quark condensate with flavor number $N_f=0, ~ 1, ~ 2, ~ 3, ~ 4$ and many quark masses, including the…
If there is a first-order phase transition in the light quark region of 2+1-flavor finite temperature and density QCD and if the region of the first-order phase transition expands with increasing density as suggested by several studies,…
We use strongly coupled lattice QED with two flavors of massless staggered fermions to model the physics of pions in two-flavor massless QCD. Our model has the right chiral symmetries and can be studied efficiently with cluster algorithms.…
A first order phase transition leading to deconfinement and chiral restoration is a likely possibility for QCD, at least in some region of the temperature-density plane. A signal for a unique transition is that the order parameters for such…
In order to quantify the universal properties of the chiral phase transition in (2+1)-flavor QCD, we make use of an improved, renormalized order parameter for chiral symmetry breaking which is obtained as a suitable difference of the…
In these lectures I review some basic examples of how the concepts of universality and scaling can be used to study aspects of the chiral and the deconfinement transition, if not in QCD directly but in QCD-like theories. As an example for…
Some recent theoretical developments of the QCD phase diagram are summarized. Chiral symmetry restoration and the confinement/deconfinement transition at nonzero temperature and quark densities are analyzed in the framework of an effective…