Sayantan Sharma

Additional strange hadrons from QCD thermodynamics and strangeness freezeout in heavy ion collisions.

We compare lattice QCD results for appropriate combinations of net strangeness fluctuations and their correlations with net baryon number fluctuations with predictions from two hadron resonance gas (HRG) models having different strange hadron content. The conventionally used HRG model based on experimentally established strange hadrons fails to describe the lattice QCD results in the hadronic phase close to the QCD crossover. Supplementing the conventional HRG with additional, experimentally uncharted strange hadrons predicted by quark model calculations and observed in lattice QCD spectrum calculations leads to good descriptions of strange hadron thermodynamics below the QCD crossover. We show that the thermodynamic presence of these additional states gets imprinted in the yields of the ground-state strange hadrons leading to a systematic 5-8xa0MeV decrease of the chemical freeze-out temperatures of ground-state strange baryons.

Strangeness at high temperatures: from hadrons to quarks

Appropriate combinations of up to fourth order cumulants of net strangeness fluctuations and their correlations with net baryon number and electric charge fluctuations, obtained from lattice QCD calculations, have been used to probe the strangeness carrying degrees of freedom at high temperatures. For temperatures up to the chiral crossover, separate contributions of strange mesons and baryons can be well described by an uncorrelated gas of hadrons. Such a description breaks down in the chiral crossover region, suggesting that the deconfinement of strangeness takes place at the chiral crossover. On the other hand, the strangeness carrying degrees of freedom inside the quark gluon plasma can be described by a weakly interacting gas of quarks only for temperatures larger than twice the chiral crossover temperature. In the intermediate temperature window, these observables show considerably richer structures, indicative of the strongly interacting nature of the quark gluon plasma.

The topological susceptibility in finite temperature QCD and axion cosmology

Abstract We study the topological susceptibility in 2 + 1 flavor QCD above the chiral crossover transition temperature using Highly Improved Staggered Quark action and several lattice spacings corresponding to temporal extent of the lattice, N τ = 6 , 8 , 10 and 12. We observe very distinct temperature dependences of the topological susceptibility in the ranges above and below 250 MeV . While for temperatures above 250 MeV , the dependence is found to be consistent with dilute instanton gas approximation, at lower temperatures the fall-off of topological susceptibility is milder. We discuss the consequence of our results for cosmology wherein we estimate the bounds on the axion decay constant and the oscillation temperature if indeed the QCD axion is a possible dark matter candidate.

The melting and abundance of open charm hadrons

Ratios of cumulants of conserved net charge fluctuations are sensitive to the degrees of freedom that are carriers of the corresponding quantum numbers in different phases of strong interaction matter. Using lattice QCD with 2+1 dynamical flavors and quenched charm quarks we calculate second and fourth order cumulants of net charm fluctuations and their correlations with other conserved charges such as net baryon number, electric charge and strangeness. Analyzing appropriate ratios of these cumulants we probe the nature of charmed degrees of freedom in the vicinity of the QCD chiral crossover region. We show that for temperatures above the chiral crossover transition temperature, charmed degrees of freedom can no longer be described by an uncorrelated gas of hadrons. This suggests that the dissociation of open charm hadrons and the emergence of deconfined charm states sets in just near the chiral crossover transition. Till the crossover region we compare these lattice QCD results with two hadron resonance gas models –including only the experimentally established charmed resonances and also including additional states predicted by quark model and lattice QCD calculations. This comparison provides evidence for so far unobserved charmed hadrons that contribute to the thermodynamics in the crossover region.

Chiral Magnetic Effect and Anomalous Transport from Real-Time Lattice Simulations

We present a first-principles study of anomaly induced transport phenomena by performing real-time lattice simulations with dynamical fermions coupled simultaneously to non-Abelian SU(N_{c}) and Abelian U(1) gauge fields. Investigating the behavior of vector and axial currents during a sphaleron transition in the presence of an external magnetic field, we demonstrate how the interplay of the chiral magnetic and chiral separation effect leads to the formation of a propagating wave. We further analyze the dependence of the magnitude of the induced vector current and the propagation of the wave on the amount of explicit chiral symmetry breaking due to finite quark masses.

Curvature of the freeze-out line in heavy ion collisions

We calculate the mean and variance of net-baryon number and net-electric charge distributions from quantum chromodynamics (QCD) using a next-to-leading order Taylor expansion in terms of temperature and chemical potentials. We compare these expansions with experimental data from STAR and PHENIX, determine the freeze-out temperature in the limit of vanishing baryon chemical potential, and, for the first time, constrain the curvature of the freeze-out line through a direct comparison between experimental data on net-charge fluctuations and a QCD calculation. We obtain a bound on the curvature coefficient, kappa(f)(2) < 0.011, that is compatible with lattice QCD results on the curvature of the QCD transition line.

Microscopic origin of U-A(1) symmetry violation in the high temperature phase of QCD

We investigate the low-lying eigenmodes of the Dirac matrix with the aim to gain more insight into the temperature dependence of the anomalous U-A(1) symmetry in QCD. We use the overlap operator to probe dynamical QCD configurations generated with (2 + 1)-flavors of highly improved staggered quarks. We find no evidence of a gap opening up in the infrared region of the eigenvalue spectrum even at 1.5T(c), T-c being the chiral crossover temperature. Instead, we observe an accumulation of near-zero eigenmodes. We argue that these near-zero eigenmodes are primarily responsible for the anomalous breaking of the axial symmetry still being effective. At 1.5T(c), these near-zero eigenmodes remain localized and their distribution is consistent with the dilute instanton gas picture. At this temperature, the average size of the instantons is 0.223(8) fm and their density is 0.147(7) fm(-4).

Nonequilibrium study of the chiral magnetic effect from real-time simulations with dynamical fermions

We present a real-time lattice approach to study the non-equilibrium dynamics of vector and axial charges in

Charm degrees of freedom in the quark gluon plasma

SU(N) times U(1)

Skewness and kurtosis of net baryon-number distributions at small values of the baryon chemical potential

gauge theories. Based on a classical description of the non-Abelian and Abelian gauge fields, we include dynamical fermions and develop operator definitions for (improved) Wilson and overlap fermions that allow us to study real-time manifestations of the axial anomaly from first principles. We present a first application of this approach to anomalous transport phenomena such as the Chiral Magnetic Effect (CME) and Chiral Separation Effect (CSE) by studying the dynamics of fermions during and after a