The behavior of quenched Dirac spectra of two-dimensional lattice QCD is consistent with spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking which is forbidden according to the Coleman-Mermin-Wagner theorem. One possible resolution of this paradox is that, because
of the bosonic determinant in the partially quenched partition function, the conditions of this theorem are violated allowing for spontaneous symmetry breaking in two dimensions or less. This goes back to work by Niedermaier and Seiler on nonamenable symmetries of the hyperbolic spin chain and earlier work by two of the auhtors on bosonic partition functions at nonzero chemical potential. In this talk we discuss chiral symmetry breaking for the bosonic partition function of QCD at nonzero isospin chemical potential and a bosonic random matrix theory at imaginary chemical potential and compare the results with the fermionic counterpart. In both cases the chiral symmetry group of the bosonic partition function is noncompact.
We present the comparison of the analytical microscopic spectral density for lattice QCD with $N_{rm f}=2$ twisted mass fermions with the one obtained on the lattice utilizing configurations produced by the ETM collaboration. We extract estimates for
the chiral condensate as well as the low-energy constant $W_8$ of Wilson $chi$-PT by employing spectral information of the Wilson Dirac operator with fixed index at finite volume.
Wilson Fermions with untwisted and twisted mass are widely used in lattice simulations. Therefore one important question is whether the twist angle and the lattice spacing affect the phase diagram. We briefly report on the study of the phase diagram
of QCD in the parameter space of the degenerate quark masses, isospin chemical potential, lattice spacing, and twist angle by employing chiral perturbation theory. Moreover we calculate the pion masses and their dependence on these four parameters.
At nonzero lattice spacing the QCD partition function with Wilson quarks undergoes either a second order phase transition to the Aoki phase for decreasing quark mass or shows a first order jump when the quark mass changes sign. We discuss these phase
transitions in terms of Wilson Dirac spectra and show that the first order scenario can only occur in the presence of dynamical quarks while in the quenched case we can only have a transition to the Aoki phase. The exact microscopic spectral density of the non-Hermitian Wilson Dirac operator with dynamical quarks is discussed as well. We conclude with some remarks on discretization effects for the overlap Dirac operator.
The microscopic spectral density of the Wilson Dirac operator for two flavor lattice QCD is analyzed. The computation includes the leading order a^2 corrections of the chiral Lagrangian in the microscopic limit. The result is used to demonstrate how
the Sharpe-Singleton first order scenario is realized in terms of the eigenvalues of the Wilson Dirac operator. We show that the Sharpe-Singleton scenario only takes place in the theory with dynamical fermions whereas the Aoki phase can be realized in the quenched as well as the unquenched theory. Moreover, we give constraints imposed by gamma_5-Hermiticity on the additional low energy constants of Wilson chiral perturbation theory.
Starting from the chiral Lagrangian for Wilson fermions at nonzero lattice spacing we have obtained compact expressions for all spectral correlation functions of the Hermitian Wilson Dirac operator in the $epsilon$-domain of QCD with dynamical quarks
. We have also obtained the distribution of the chiralities over the real eigenvalues of the Wilson Dirac operator for any number of flavors. All results have been derived for a fixed index of the Dirac operator. An important effect of dynamical quarks is that they completely suppress the inverse square root singularity in the spectral density of the Hermitian Wilson Dirac operator. The analytical results are given in terms of an integral over a diffusion kernel for which the square of the lattice spacing plays the role of time. This approach greatly simplifies the expressions which we here reduce to the evaluation of two-dimensional integrals.
In this lecture we discuss various properties of the phase factor of the fermion determinant for QCD at nonzero chemical potential. Its effect on physical observables is elucidated by comparing the phase diagram of QCD and phase quenched QCD and by i
llustrating the failure of the Banks-Casher formula with the example of one-dimensional QCD. The average phase factor and the distribution of the phase are calculated to one-loop order in chiral perturbation theory. In quantitative agreement with lattice QCD results, we find that the distribution is Gaussian with a width $sim mu T sqrt V$ (for $m_pi ll T ll Lambda_{rm QCD}$). Finally, we introduce, so-called teflon plated observables which can be calculated accurately by Monte Carlo even though the sign problem is severe.
In this lecture we discuss various aspects of QCD at nonzero chemical potential, including its phase diagram and the Dirac spectrum, and summarize what chiral random matrix theory has contributed to this subject. To illustrate the importance of the p
hase of the fermion determinant, we particularly highlight the differences between QCD and phase quenched QCD.
In this talk we discuss the microscopic limit of QCD at nonzero chemical potential. In this domain, where the QCD partition function is under complete analytical control, we uncover an entirely new link between the spectral density of the Dirac opera
tor and the chiral condensate: violent complex oscillations on the microscopic scale give rise to the discontinuity of the chiral condensate at zero quark mass. We first establish this relation exactly within a random matrix framework and then analyze the importance of the individual modes by Fourier analysis.
The chiral condensate in QCD at zero temperature does not depend on the quark chemical potential (up to one third the nucleon mass), whereas the spectral density of the Dirac operator shows a strong dependence on the chemical potential. The cancellat
ions which make this possible also occur on the microscopic scale, where they can be investigated by means of a random matrix model. We show that they can be understood in terms of orthogonality properties of orthogonal polynomials. In the strong non-Hermiticity limit they are related to integrability properties of the spectral density. As a by-product we find exact analytical expressions for the partially quenched chiral condensate in the microscopic domain at nonzero chemical potential.
