ORCID
- Davide Vadacchino: 0000-0002-5783-5602
Abstract
When studied at finite temperature, Yang-Mills theories in 3+1 dimensions display the presence of confinement/deconfinement phase transitions, which are known to be of first order - the SU(2) gauge theory being the exception. Theoretical as well as phenomenological considerations indicate that it is essential to establish a precise characterization of these physical systems in proximity of such phase transitions. We present and test a new method to study the critical region of parameter space in non-Abelian quantum field theories on the lattice, based upon the logarithmic linear relaxation (LLR) algorithm. We apply this method to the SU(3) Yang-Mills lattice gauge theory, and perform extensive calculations with one fixed choice of lattice size. We identify the critical temperature, and measure interesting physical quantities near the transition. Among them, we determine the free energy of the model in the critical region, exposing for the first time its multivalued nature with a numerical calculation from first principles, providing this novel evidence in support of a first-order phase transition. This study sets the stage for future high-precision measurements, by demonstrating the potential of the method.
DOI Link
Publication Date
2023-10-23
Publication Title
Physical Review D
Volume
108
Issue
7
ISSN
2470-0010
Acceptance Date
2023-09-20
Deposit Date
2024-03-15
Embargo Period
2024-03-20
Funding
We would like to thank David Schaich, Felix Springer, Jong-Wan Lee, and Antonio Rago for discussions. The work of D. M. is supported by a studentship awarded by the Data Intensive Centre for Doctoral Training, which is funded by the STFC Grant No. ST/P006779/1. The work of DV is partly supported by the Simons Foundation under the program “Targeted Grants to Institutes” awarded to the Hamilton Mathematics Institute. The work of B. L. and M. P. has been supported in part by the STFC Consolidated Grants No. ST/P00055X/1 and No. ST/T000813/1. B. L. and M. P. received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under Grant Agreement No. 813942. The work of B. L. is further supported in part by the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award No. WM170010 and by the Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship No. RF-2020-4619. Numerical simulations have been performed on the Swansea SUNBIRD cluster (part of the Supercomputing Wales project) and AccelerateAI A100 GPU system, and on the DiRAC Data Intensive service at Leicester. The Swansea SUNBIRD system and AccelerateAI are part funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) via Welsh Government. The DiRAC Data Intensive service at Leicester is operated by the University of Leicester IT Services, which forms part of the STFC DiRAC HPC Facility ([170]). The DiRAC Data Intensive service equipment at Leicester was funded by BEIS capital funding via STFC capital Grants No. ST/K000373/1 and No. ST/R002363/1 and STFC DiRAC Operations Grant No. ST/R001014/1. DiRAC is part of the National e-Infrastructure.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Lucini, B., Mason, D., Piai, M., Rinaldi, E., & Vadacchino, D. (2023) 'First-order phase transitions in Yang-Mills theories and the density of state method', Physical Review D, 108(7). Available at: 10.1103/physrevd.108.074517
