A new approach to study the equation of state in finite-temperature QCD is proposed on the lattice. Unlike the conventional method in which the temporal lattice size $N_t$ is fixed, the temperature $T$ is varied by changing $N_t$ at fixed lattice scale. The pressure of the hot QCD plasma is calculated by the integration of the trace anomaly with respect to $T$ at fixed lattice scale. This $T$-integral method is tested in quenched QCD on isotropic and anisotropic lattices and is shown to give reliable results especially at intermediate and low temperatures.
We study the thermodynamics of the SU(3) gauge theory using the fixed-scale approach with shifted boundary conditions. The fixed-scale approach can reduce the numerical cost of the zero-temperature part in the equation of state calculations, while the number of possible temperatures is limited by the integer $N_t$, which represents the temporal lattice extent. The shifted boundary conditions can overcome such a limitation while retaining the advantages of the fixed-scale approach. Therefore, our approach enables the investigation of not only the equation of state in detail, but also the calculation of the critical temperature with increased precision even with the fixed-scale approach. We also confirm numerically that the boundary conditions suppress the lattice artifact of the equation of state, which has been confirmed in the non-interacting limit.
We study the equation of state in 2+1 flavor QCD with nonperturbatively improved Wilson quarks coupled with the RG-improved Iwasaki glue. We apply the $T$-integration method to nonperturbatively calculate the equation of state by the fixed-scale approach. With the fixed-scale approach, we can purely vary the temperature on a line of constant physics without changing the system size and renormalization constants. Unlike the conventional fixed-$N_t$ approach, it is easy to keep scaling violations small at low temperature in the fixed scale approach. We study 2+1 flavor QCD at light quark mass corresponding to $m_pi/m_rho simeq 0.63$, while the strange quark mass is chosen around the physical point. Although the light quark masses are heavier than the physical values yet, our equation of state is roughly consistent with recent results with highly improved staggered quarks at large $N_t$.
We report on the status of our study towards the equation of state in 2+1 flavor QCD with improved Wilson quarks. To reduce the computational cost which is quite demanding for Wilson-type quarks, we adopt the fixed scale approach, i.e. the temperature T is varied by N_t at fixed lattice spacing. Since the conventional integral method to obtain the pressure is inapplicable at a fixed scale, we adopt the T-integral method, to calculate the pressure non-perturbatively. Reduction of the computational cost of T=0 simulations thus achieved is indispensable to study EOS in QCD with dynamical quarks.
We calculated the QCD equation of state using Taylor expansions that include contributions from up to sixth order in the baryon, strangeness and electric charge chemical potentials. Calculations have been performed with the Highly Improved Staggered Quark action in the temperature range $Tin [135~{rm MeV}, 330~{rm MeV}]$ using up to four different sets of lattice cut-offs corresponding to lattices of size $N_sigma^3times N_tau$ with aspect ratio $N_sigma/N_tau=4$ and $N_tau =6-16$. The strange quark mass is tuned to its physical value and we use two strange to light quark mass ratios $m_s/m_l=20$ and $27$, which in the continuum limit correspond to a pion mass of about $160$ MeV and $140$ MeV espectively. Sixth-order results for Taylor expansion coefficients are used to estimate truncation errors of the fourth-order expansion. We show that truncation errors are small for baryon chemical potentials less then twice the temperature ($mu_Ble 2T$). The fourth-order equation of state thus is suitable for the modeling of dense matter created in heavy ion collisions with center-of-mass energies down to $sqrt{s_{NN}}sim 12$ GeV. We provide a parametrization of basic thermodynamic quantities that can be readily used in hydrodynamic simulation codes. The results on up to sixth order expansion coefficients of bulk thermodynamics are used for the calculation of lines of constant pressure, energy and entropy densities in the $T$-$mu_B$ plane and are compared with the crossover line for the QCD chiral transition as well as with experimental results on freeze-out parameters in heavy ion collisions. These coefficients also provide estimates for the location of a possible critical point. We argue that results on sixth order expansion coefficients disfavor the existence of a critical point in the QCD phase diagram for $mu_B/Tle 2$ and $T/T_c(mu_B=0) > 0.9$.
Free energies between static quarks and Debye screening masses in the quark-gluon plasma are studied on the basis of Polyakov-line correlations in lattice simulations of 2+1 flavors QCD with the renormalization-group improved gluon action and the $O(a)$-improved Wilson quark action. We perform simulations at $m_{rm PS}/m_{rm V} = 0.63$ (0.74) for light (strange) flavors with lattice sizes of $32^3 times N_t$ with $N_t=4$--12. We adopt the fixed-scale approach, where temperature can be varied without changing the spatial volume and renormalization factor. We find that, at short distance, the free energies of static quarks in color-singlet channel converge to the static-quark potential evaluated from the Wilson-loop at zero-temperature, in accordance with the expected insensitivity of short distance physics to the temperature. At long distance, the free energies of static quarks approach to twice the single-quark free energies, implying that the interaction between static quarks is fully screened. The screening properties can be well described by the screened Coulomb form with appropriate Casimir factor at high temperature. We also discuss a limitation of the fixed-scale approach at high temperature.