Speaker
Description
QCD with infinite heavy quark masses exhibits a first-order thermal transition which is driven by the spontaneous breaking of the global $\mathcal{Z}_3$ center symmetry. We analyze the corresponding order parameter, namely the Polyakov loop and its moments, and show, with a rigorous finite size scaling, that in the continuum limit the transition is of first order. We show that the use of a parallel tempering algorithm can significantly reduce the large auto-correlation times, which are mainly caused by supercritical slowing down for first order phase transitions. As a result, we calculate the transition temperature $w_0 T_c$ with per-mill precision, and the latent heat, carrying out controlled continuum and infinite volume extrapolations.
Decreasing the quark masses weakens the transition until the latent heat vanishes at the critical mass. We give an update on our exploration of the heavy mass region with three flavors of staggered quarks.
