Topology in QCD and the axion abundance

The temperature dependence of the topological susceptibility in QCD, chi_t, essentially determines the abundance of the QCD axion in the Universe, and is commonly estimated, based on the instanton picture, to be a certain negative power of temperature. While lattice QCD should be able to check this behavior in principle, the temperature range where lattice QCD works is rather limited in practice, because the topological charge is apt to freezes at high temperatures. In this work, two exploratory studies are presented. In the first part, we try to specify the temperature range in the quenched approximation. Since our purpose here is to estimate the range expected in unquenched QCD through quenched simulations, hybrid Monte Carlo (HMC) algorithm is employed instead of heatbath algorithm. We obtain an indication that unquenched calculations of chi_t encounter the serious problem of autocorrelation already at T~2Tc or even below with the plain HMC. In the second part, we revisit the axion abundance. The absolute value and the temperature dependence of chi_t in real QCD can be significantly different from that in the quenched approximation, and is not well established above the critical temperature. Motivated by this fact and precedent arguments which disagree with the conventional instanton picture, we estimate the axion abundance in an extreme case where chi_t decreases much faster than the conventional power-like behavior. We find a significant enhancement of the axion abundance in such a case.

First order transition regions in the quark masses and chemical potential parameter space of QCD

We investigate the phase transitions of (2+Nf)-flavor QCD, where two light flavors and Nf massive flavors exist, aiming to understand the phase structure of (2+1)-flavor QCD. Performing simulations of 2-flavor QCD with improved staggered and Wilson fermions and using the reweighting method, we calculate probability distribution functions in the many-flavor QCD. Through the shape of distribution functions, we determine the critical surface terminating first order phase transitions in the parameter space of the light quark mass, heavy quark mass and the chemical potential, and find that the first order region becomes larger with Nf. We then study the critical surface at finite density for large Nf and the first order region is found to become wider with the increasing chemical potential. On the other hand, the light quark mass dependence of the critical mass of heavy quarks seems weak in the region we investigated. The result of this weak dependence suggests that the critical mass of heavy quark remains finite in the chiral limit of 2-flavors and there exists a second order transition region on the line of the 2-flavor massless limit above the tri-critical point. Moreover, we extend the study of 2-flavor QCD at finite density to the case of a complex chemical potential and investigate the singularities where the partition function vanishes, so-called Lee-Yang zeros. The plaquette effective potential is computed in the complex plane. We find that the shape of the effective potential changes from single-well on the real axis to double-well at large imaginary chemical potential and the double-well potential causes the singularities.

Nature of finite temperature and density phase transitions in many-flavor QCD

We investigate the phase structure of (2+Nf)-flavor QCD, where two light flavors and Nf massive flavors exist, to discuss the feasibility of the electroweak baryogenesis in realistic technicolor scenario and to understand properties of finite density QCD. Because an appearance of a first order phase transition at finite temperature is a necessary condition for the baryogenesis, it is important to study the nature of finite temperature phase transition. Applying the reweighting method, the probability distribution function of the plaquette is calculated in the many-flavor QCD. Through the shape of the distribution function, we determine the critical mass of heavy flavors terminating the first order region, and find it to become larger with Nf. We moreover study the critical line at finite density and the first order region is found to become wider as increasing the chemical potential. We discuss how the properties of real (2+1)-flavor QCD at finite temperature and density can be extracted from simulations of many-flavor QCD.