Finite temperature QCD phase transition and its scaling window from Wilson twisted mass fermions

We study the properties of finite temperature QCD using lattice simulations with Nf = 2 + 1 + 1 Wilson twisted mass fermions for pion masses from physical up to heavy quark regime. In particular, we investigate the scaling properties of the chiral phase transition close to the chiral limit. We found compatibility with O(4) universality class for pion masses up to physical and in the temperature range [120 : 300] MeV. We also discuss other alternatives, including mean field behaviour or Z2 scaling. We provide an estimation of the critical temperature in the chiral limit, T0 = 134−4+6 MeV, which is stable against various scaling scenarios.

Rotated twisted-mass: a convenient regularization scheme for isospin breaking QCD and QED lattice calculations

We propose a scheme of lattice twisted-mass fermion regularization which is particularly convenient for application to isospin breaking (IB) QCD and QED calculations, based in particular on the so called RM123 approach, in which the IB terms of the action are treated as a perturbation. The main, practical advantage of this scheme is that it allows the calculation of IB effects on some mesonic observables, like e.g. the $$\pi ^+ - \pi ^0$$ π + - π 0 mass splitting, using lattice correlation functions in which the quark and antiquark fields in the meson are regularized with opposite values of the Wilson parameter r. These correlation functions are found to be affected by much smaller statistical fluctuations, with respect to the analogous functions in which quark and antiquark fields are regularized with the same value of r. Two numerical application of this scheme, that we call rotated twisted-mass, within pure QCD and QCD + QED respectively, are also provided for illustration.

$$ \mathcal{N} $$ = 1 Super-Yang-Mills theory on the lattice with twisted mass fermions

Super-Yang-Mills theory (SYM) is a central building block for supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics. Whereas the weakly coupled subsector of the latter can be treated within a perturbative setting, the strongly coupled subsector must be dealt with a non-perturbative approach. Such an approach is provided by the lattice formulation. Unfortunately a lattice regularization breaks supersymmetry and consequently the mass degeneracy within a supermultiplet. In this article we investigate the properties of $$ \mathcal{N} $$ N = 1 supersymmetric SU(3) Yang-Mills theory with a lattice Wilson Dirac operator with an additional parity mass, similar as in twisted mass lattice QCD. We show that a special 45° twist effectively removes the mass splitting of the chiral partners. Thus, at finite lattice spacing both chiral and supersymmetry are enhanced resulting in an improved continuum extrapolation. Furthermore, we show that for the non-interacting theory at 45° twist discretization errors of order $$ \mathcal{O}(a) $$ O a are suppressed, suggesting that the same happens for the interacting theory as well. As an aside, we demonstrate that the DDαAMG multigrid algorithm accelerates the inversion of the Wilson Dirac operator considerably. On a 163× 32 lattice, speed-up factors of up to 20 are reached if commonly used algorithms are replaced by the DDαAMG.