I report on the first application of a novel, generalized Bayesian reconstruction (BR) method for spectral functions to the characterization of QCD constituents. These spectral functions find applications in off-shell kinetics of the quark-gluon plasma and in calculations of transport coefficients. The new BR method is applied to Euclidean propagator data, obtained in Landau gauge on lattices with $N_f=2+1+1$ dynamical flavors by the twisted mass at finite temperature (tmfT) collaboration. The deployed reconstruction method is designed for spectral functions that can exhibit positivity violation (opposed to that of hadronic bound states). The transversal and longitudinal gluon spectral functions show a robust structure composed of quasiparticle peak and a negative trough. Characteristic differences between the hadronic and the plasma phase and between the two channels become visible. We obtain the temperature dependence of the transversal and longitudinal gluon masses.
We present results for the interaction of two kaons at maximal isospin. The calculation is based on 2+1+1 flavour gauge configurations generated by the ETM Collaboration (ETMC) featuring pion masses ranging from about 230 MeV to 450 MeV at three values of the lattice spacing. The elastic scattering length $a_0^{I=1}$ is calculated at several values of the bare strange quark and light quark masses. We find $M_K a_0 =-0.397(11)(_{-8}^{+0})$ as the result of a chiral and continuum extrapolation to the physical point. This number is compared to other lattice results.
The masses of the low lying baryons are evaluated using a total of ten ensembles of dynamical twisted mass fermion gauge configurations. The simulations are performed using two degenerate flavors of light quarks, and a strange and a charm quark fixed to approximately their physical values. The light sea quarks correspond to pseudo scalar masses in the range of about 210~MeV to 430~MeV. We use the Iwasaki improved gluonic action at three values of the coupling constant corresponding to lattice spacing $a=0.094$~fm, 0.082~fm and 0.065~fm determined from the nucleon mass. We check for both finite volume and cut-off effects on the baryon masses. We examine the issue of isospin symmetry breaking for the octet and decuplet baryons and its dependence on the lattice spacing. We show that in the continuum limit isospin breaking is consistent with zero, as expected. We performed a chiral extrapolation of the forty baryon masses using SU(2) $chi$PT. After taking the continuum limit and extrapolating to the physical pion mass our results are in good agreement with experiment. We provide predictions for the mass of the doubly charmed $Xi_{cc}^*$, as well as of the doubly and triply charmed $Omega$s that have not yet been determined experimentally.
Finite temperature charmonium spectral functions in the pseudoscalar and vector channels are studied in lattice QCD with 2+1 flavours of dynamical Wilson quarks, on fine isotropic lattices (with a lattice spacing of 0.057 fm), with a non-physical pion mass of $m_{pi} approx$ 545 MeV. The highest temperature studied is approximately $1.4 T_c$. Up to this temperature no significant variation of the spectral function is seen in the pseudoscalar channel. The vector channel shows some temperature dependence, which seems to be consistent with a temperature dependent low frequency peak related to heavy quark transport, plus a temperature independent term at omega>0. These results are in accord with previous calculations using the quenched approximation.
We compute various (generalized) isovector charges of the octet baryons. These include $g_A$, $g_T$ and $g_S$ as well as the unpolarized, polarized and transversity parton distribution function (PDF) momentum fractions $langle xrangle_{u^+-d^+}$, $langle xrangle_{Delta u^--Delta d^-}$ and $langle xrangle_{delta u^+-delta ^+}$. The simulations are carried out on a subset of the (isospin symmetric) $N_f=2+1$ flavour Coordinated Lattice Simulations (CLS) gauge ensembles with lattice spacings ranging from $aapprox 0.086,$fm down to $aapprox 0.050,$fm. First results on the breaking of flavour symmetry and the low energy constants $F$ and $D$ are presented. While SU(3) flavour symmetry violations are found to be sizeable for $g_A=langle 1rangle_{Delta u^+-Delta d^+}$, these are quite small for $g_T=langle 1rangle_{delta u^--delta d^-}$ and $langle xrangle_{u^+-d^+}$.
Chiral Random Matrix Theory has proven to describe the spectral properties of low temperature QCD very well. However, at temperatures above the chiral symmetry restoring transition it can not provide a global description. The level-spacing distribution in the lower part of the spectrum of the Dirac operator is Poisson-like. There the eigenmodes are localized in space-time and separated from the rest of the spectrum by a so-called mobility edge. In analogy to Anderson localization in condensed-matter systems with random disorder this has been called the QCD-Anderson transition. Here, we study the localization features of the low-lying eigenmodes of the massless overlap operator on configurations generated with $N_f=2+1+1$ twisted mass Wilson sea quarks and present results concerning the temperature dependence of the mobility edge and the mechanism of the quark-mode localization. We have used various methods to fix the spectral position of the delocalization transition and verify that the mobility edge extrapolates to zero at a temperature within the chiral transition region.