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# 1 Octet melting

## 1 Octet melting

Lattice simulations for QCD at high temperature  find empirically that chiral symmetry restoration and deconfinement occur at the same critical temperature $`T_c`$ . Sufficiently below $`T_c`$ the equation of state is rather well approximated by a gas of mesons. Gluons and quarks or baryons play no important role. Above $`T_c`$ the dominant thermodynamic degrees of freedom are gluons and quarks. The change in the relevant number of degrees of freedom occurs rather rapidly and may be associated with a thermodynamic phase transition.

The transition to the high-temperature state of QCD is often called “deconfinement transition” since the gluon modes with momenta $`p^2(\pi T)^2`$ characteristic for a thermal state behave at high temperature close to a gas of free particles. (For experimentally accessible temperatures above the phase transition substantial corrections to the equation of state of a relativistic gas remain present.) This also holds for the fermionic degrees of freedom which appear essentially as free quarks. Having a closer look the picture of weakly interacting gluons is actually somewhat oversimplified. In fact, the long-distance behavior of the time-averaged correlation functions in high temperature QCD corresponds to a “confining” three-dimensional effective theory  with a strong effective coupling and a temperature-dependent “confinement scale” , . Furthermore, the transition between confinement and weakly interacting “free” quarks is less dramatic than it may seem at first sight. In particular, it needs not to be associated with a true phase transition. In presence of light quarks, the temperature-induced changes in the long-distance behavior of the heavy quark potential are only quantitative . String breaking occurs for arbitrary temperature.

Nevertheless, one expects a temperature range where the properties of strong interactions change rapidly, reflecting “deconfinement”. We associate here “deconfinement” with the transition to a thermal equilibrium state for which (1) the bosonic contribution to the free energy can be approximated by the one of a free gas of eight massless spin-one bosons and, correspondingly, (2) possible masslike terms in the effective “gluon-propagator” are of the order of the temperature or smaller. We do not deal in this paper with temperature-dependent changes in the heavy quark potential and temperature effects in the dynamics of string breaking.

On the other hand, the chiral properties of QCD are also expected to undergo a rapid change at some temperature. The vacuum is characterized by a chiral condensate of quark-antiquark pairs. This order is destroyed at high temperature and chiral symmetry is restored. For vanishing quark masses this implies a true phase transition. In this case chiral symmetry restoration at high temperature is signalled by a vanishing order parameter. At high temperature the massless quarks contribute to the free energy as a relativistic gas with $`3N_f`$ fermions whereas below a critical temperature the fermionic degrees of freedom appear as massive baryons without much relevance for thermodynamics. This qualitative change in the fermionic contribution remains true also in presence of small nonvanishing quark masses. We associate the chiral transition at high $`T`$ with a rapid decrease of jump in the chiral order parameter and the appearance of a relativistic quark gas contribution to the free energy.

The qualitative feature that at high temperature deconfinement and chiral symmetry restoration come in pair is not much of a mystery: modes with momenta $`T`$ dominate the thermal state and the interactions between these modes become comparatively weak. Symmetry restoration at high $`T`$ is a common phenomenon. It is a longstanding puzzle, however, why deconfinement and chiral symmetry restoration occur quantitatively at the same temperature. Analytical approaches that have been investigated so far either concentrate on the quark degrees of freedom – for example in the context of Nambu-Jona-Lasinio models . This reflects important aspects of the chiral transition but fails to describe the effects of confinement and the thermodynamic equation of state of QCD. Other models deal with pure QCD without including the important aspects connected with the presence of light quarks. So far we are not aware of any successful quantitative analytical description accounting simultaneously for the deconfinement and chiral symmetry restoration aspects of the QCD phase transition. In view of the vaste experimental efforts  and the important progress in numerical simulations ,  even an oversimplified analytical description of the most salient characteristics of this transition would be very welcome.

One of the main difficulties for any analytical description are the different relevant degrees of freedom above and below the critical temperature. Whereas for high T a gas of quarks and gluons becomes a reasonable approximation, the low temperature physics is described by an interacting pion gas with far less degrees of freedom. The fermionic degrees of freedom at low T are baryons which are Boltzmann-supressed. Any quantitative analytical description must be able to describe both gluons and pions as well as quarks and baryons simultaneously. This is mandatory at least in the vicinity of the critical temperature which is precisely characterized by the transition from one set of dominant degrees of freedom to another. The recently proposed Higgs-picture of the QCD-vacuum  offers such a possibility since all relevant degrees of freedom are described at once. A reasonable picture of the QCD-phase transition may also serve as a test for these ideas.

In this paper we propose a simple explanation of the simultaneous occurrence of the deconfinement and chiral transition and present first quantitative estimates. Our explanation is based on the proposed new understanding of the QCD-vacuum by “spontaneous breaking of color” or gluon-meson duality . In this picture of the vacuum the condensate $`<\chi >`$ of a color octet quark-antiquark pair leads to spontaneous breaking of the color symmetry. (As for the electroweak standard model there exists an equivalent gauge invariant formulation.) The gluons acquire a mass $`<\chi >`$ by the Higgs mechanism and become integer charged. Gluon-meson duality associates the massive gluons with the physical vector mesons $`\rho ,K^{}`$ and $`\omega `$. This is possible since they carry the appropriate integer electric charges as well as isospin and strangeness. Also the quarks carry integer charges after spontaneous color symmetry breaking and can be associated with the baryons $`(p,n,\mathrm{\Lambda },\mathrm{\Sigma },\mathrm{\Xi })`$ plus a heavy singlet. They become massive due to the spontaneous breaking of the chiral flavor symmetry by $`<\chi >`$ and a similar singlet $`\overline{q}q`$\- condensate. This association between quark fields and baryons is called quark-baryon duality. It is the analogue of color-flavor locking  for a high baryon density.

It has been argued on phenomenological grounds  that the dominant contribution to spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking arises from the octet condensate $`<\chi >`$. The same condensate therefore explains both confinement and spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking. In this description the solution to the puzzle why deconfinement and chiral symmetry restoration are connected becomes obvious. At some critical temperature $`T_c`$ the value of the octet condensate $`<\chi >`$ drops rapidly. At this temperature the mass of the gluons therefore drastically decreases and the deconfinement transition happens. In the limit of three massless quarks the expectation value $`<\chi >`$ exactly vanishes at $`T_c`$, reflecting chiral symmetry restoration. Typically, the color-octet and -singlet $`\overline{q}q`$-expectation values influence each other. In particular, an octet condensate always induces a singlet condensate. It seems plausible that both the octet and singlet condensates vanish simultaneously for $`T>T_c`$. Then chiral symmetry gets completely restored for $`T>T_c`$, leading to a true phase transition characterized by the order parameter of chiral symmetry breaking. The critical temperature for the phase transition is the “melting temperature” for the octet condensate. The “deconfinement temperature” and “chiral symmetry restoration temperature” are therefore identical. As a consequence of the change in the order parameter the quantum numbers of the excitations in the “hadronic phase” for $`T<T_c`$ differ from the ones in the “quark-gluon phase” for $`T>T_c`$.

Quark mass effects modify the details of the transition. For a more quantitative description of “octet melting” we omit in this paper the difference between the current quark masses and consider three light quark flavors with equal mass. For our quantitative analysis we will need information about the condensates in the vacuum which are related to the form of the effective quark interactions. We investigate a rather wide class of effective multiquark interactions induced by instanton effects. In the chiral limit of three massless quarks we find a first-order transition with critical temperature $`T_c130160`$ MeV. In this limit the mass of the eight pseudoscalar Goldstone bosons $`(\pi ,K,\eta )`$ vanishes at low temperature, $`m_{PS}=0`$. For realistic current quark masses corresponding to a nonzero average pseudoscalar mass $`m_{PS}^2(2M_K^2+M_\pi ^2)/3`$, we again get a first-order transition with a somewhat larger $`T_c`$ 170-180 MeV.

In this note we do not deal explicitly with the color-singlet quark-antiquark pair which plays a subdominant role. The relevant thermodynamic potential is then given by the temperature-dependent effective potential for the octet condensate

$$U(\chi ,T)=U_0(\chi )+\mathrm{\Delta }U(\chi ,T)$$
(1)
Here $`U_0`$ encodes in a bosonic language for scalar $`\overline{q}q`$-composites the information about the multiquark interactions in the vacuum, whereas $`\mathrm{\Delta }U`$ accounts for the thermal fluctuations. We use a scalar field $`\chi _{ij,ab}\overline{\psi }_{jb}\psi _{ai}\frac{1}{3}\overline{\psi }_{kb}\psi _{ak}\delta _{ij}`$ for the octet quark-antiquark pair with $`i,j=1\mathrm{}3`$ color indices and $`a,b=1\mathrm{}N_f`$ flavor indices for massless (or light) quarks. For $`N_f=3`$ it is sufficient to evaluate the effective potential for the direction of the condensate

$$<\chi _{ij,ab}>=\frac{1}{\sqrt{6}}\chi (\delta _{ia}\delta _{jb}\frac{1}{3}\delta _{ij}\delta _{ab})$$
(2)
In the limit of three equal quark masses this condensates preserves a vector-like $`SU(3)`$-symmetry which contains the generators of isospin and strangeness.

We emphasize that in our picture the thermodynamic quantities depend on the number of light flavors in an important way. For example, the vacuum condensates for two-flavor QCD ($`N_f=2`$) are discussed in  and differ substantially from the three-flavor case. Needless to say that in absence of light quarks the chiral aspects of the phase transition are completely different. We restrict our discussion here to the realistic case $`N_f=3`$. Quark mass effects are taken into account except for the $`SU(3)`$-violation due to the mass differences. The thermodynamic quantities of interest can then be extracted from the behavior of the minima of $`U(\chi ,T)`$. For $`T=0`$ the minimum occurs for a nonvanishing octet condensate $`\chi _00`$. As the temperature increases, the thermal fluctuations induce a new local minimum at the origin $`\chi =0`$. At the critical temperature $`T_c`$ the two minima are degenerate. The discontinuity characteristic for a first-order phase transition corresponds to the jump to the absolute minimum at $`\chi =0`$ for $`T>T_c`$.

The remainder of this paper is devoted to a more detailed estimate of $`U(\chi ,T)`$. We will employ a mean field-type calculation which takes into account, nevertheless, the most important effects of the strong interactions. We will devote some care to the proper implementation of the mean field calculation despite the fact that some other approximations in our approach (like the effective vacuum potential) remain rather crude. The reason is that we want to describe correctly the interacting pion gas at low temperature within a linear formulation. The linear formulation is necessary for a description of symmetry restoration at $`T_c`$, since for $`T>T_c`$ the Goldstone bosons are combined with the $`\sigma `$ -scalar into linear multiplets of the flavor group. On the other hand, the nonlinear Goldstone excitations dominate the free energy at low $`T`$ and chiral perturbation theory gives a valid description. We will see that a linear mean field description easily leads to incorrect results for the nonlinear excitations unless done with sufficient care. Furthermore, we do not want to obscure the possibility of a second order phase transition by using a method which is too rough. Again, unless the bosonic degrees of freedom are treated with care, a mean field computation can easily produce a spurious first order jump even in a situation of a second order transition or a crossover. This is well known from the study of scalar field theories or the electroweak phase transition.

Our paper is organized as follows: Sect. 2 addresses the form of the vacuum potential $`U_0(\chi )`$, which was estimated previously  by an instanton calculation. In sect. 3 we discuss the dependence of the masses of the most relevant excitations on the octet condensate $`\chi `$. This is the basis for our mean field-type calculation of the temperature effects $`\mathrm{\Delta }U(\chi ,T)`$ in sect. 4. A first summary of quantitative results for the chiral phase transition is given in sect. 5 in the chiral limit of massless quarks. For the instanton-induced potential $`U_0(\chi )`$ proposed in sect. 2 we find a critical temperature $`T_c`$=154 MeV, consistent with lattice estimates . Sect. 6 is devoted to the high-temperature phase and the equation of state. Sufficiently above $`T_c`$ one observes a weakly interacting gas of gluons and quarks. In sect. 7 we present analytical estimates for the chiral phase transition. In particular, for three massless quarks the critical temperature is related to the mass of the $`\eta ^{}`$-meson and its decay constant $`f_\theta `$ by

$$T_c^4=0.013M_\eta ^{}^2f_\theta ^2R^{\frac{1}{4}}$$
(3)
with $`R<1`$ a constant of order one.

We turn to the value of the chiral symmetry-breaking order parameter in the low temperature phase in sect. 8. This needs a meaningful treatment of the Goldstone boson fluctuations which we propose in sect. 9. In sect. 10 we verify that our prescriptions are consistent with chiral perturbation theory for low enough $`T`$. Sect. 11 discusses the effects of nonvanishing current quark masses. We consider equal current quark masses which correspond to an average mass of the pseudoscalar Goldstone bosons $`M_{PS}=`$390 MeV. Up to $`SU(3)`$-violating quark mass differences this corresponds to a realistic situation. We find $`T_c=`$170 MeV, again consistent with lattice simulations . In the low temperature phase the Higgs contribution to the mass of the vector mesons decreases substantially as the temperature increases. In the vicinity of $`T_c`$ we find a Higgs contribution to the average vector meson mass $``$ 300 MeV and to the average mass for the light baryons $``$ 600 MeV. Those have to be supplemented by thermal mass contributions. A decrease of the vector meson mass  may be relevant for the dilepton spectrum observed in heavy ion collisions. Finally, we investigate in sect. 12 a possible lattice test of our scenario by establishing the existence of stable $`Z_3`$-vortices in the low temperature phase. Sect. 13 summarizes our conclusions.

## 2 Vacuum-effective potential

The effect of the thermal fluctuations has to be compared with the vacuum-effective potential $`U_0(\chi )`$ for the octet. We will not need here many details of the precise shape of $`U_0`$. The most important parameter for the determination of the critical temperature $`T_c`$ for the phase transition will turn out to be the difference $`U_0(0)U_0(\chi _0)`$, with $`\chi _0`$ the vacuum expectation value of the octet. To be specific, we concentrate here on an instanton-induced potential which is motivated by the observation that instanton effects are a plausible candidate for the dynamics that lead to a non-vanishing octet condensate . Beyond the octet $`\overline{q}q`$-condensate realistic QCD exhibits also a nonvanishing color-singlet $`\overline{q}q`$-condensate $`\sigma `$. In order to concentrate our discussion on the essential aspects, we assume here that $`\sigma `$ is “integrated out” by solving its effective field equation222The effective kinetic term and interactions of the $`\chi `$-field include therefore contributions from the color singlet field $`\sigma `$ as well. In a two-field language a non-zero $`\sigma `$ is necessarily generated for $`\chi 0`$ by terms $`\sigma \chi ^2`$ present in the contribution from the chiral anomaly for $`N_f=3`$. as a functional of $`\chi `$. We take here $`\sigma \chi `$ (in the relevant range) such that all $`\overline{q}q`$ condensates are accounted for by $`\chi `$.

For $`N_f=3`$ and small values of $`\overline{q}q`$ the instanton effects lead to a cubic term, $`U_{an}\chi ^3(\overline{q}q)^3`$. For large values of $`\chi `$ the nonvanishing gluon mass $`\chi `$ leads to an effective infrared cutoff for the instanton interactions, resulting in $`U_{an}\chi ^{11}`$ . A first quantitative estimate of the instanton-induced effective potential can be found in  and we exploit its consequences in the present work. However, in view of the uncertainties of this estimate we will be satisfied here with a simplified version which respects the asymptotic properties for small and large $`\chi `$

$`(\mathrm{A}):U_0(\chi )=\lambda \{`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{14}{11}}R_{an}\chi _0\chi ^3(1+{\displaystyle \frac{3}{11}}({\displaystyle \frac{\chi }{\chi _0}})^{14})^1+`$ (4)
$`(1R_{an})(\chi ^42\chi _0^2\chi ^2)+\chi _0^4\}`$
The instanton contribution is the one $`R_{an}`$ and we have added another contribution $`(1R_{an})`$ which arises from non-anomalous interactions not related to instantons, as, for example, multiquark interactions mediated by gluon exchange. Presumably the vacuum potential is dominated by instanton effects  such that $`R_{an}`$ is expected close to one. In our conventions $`\chi `$ is real and we have parametrized the potential such that the absolute minimum of $`U_0`$ occurs at $`\chi _0`$, with $`U_0(\chi =0)=\lambda \chi _0^4,\lambda >0`$. The additive constant is fixed such that the pressure vanishes in the vacuum. In absence of quark masses this implies $`U_0(\chi _0)=0`$.

In order to investigate how sensitively our results depend on the precise shape of the potential, we consider for $`N_f=3`$ also a potential which only incorporates the breaking of the discrete symmetry $`\chi \chi `$ by the anomaly, without having the correct asymptotic behavior

$$(\mathrm{B}):U_0(\chi )=\lambda \{R_{an}(3\chi ^44\chi _0\chi ^3)+(1R_{an})(\chi ^42\chi _0^2\chi ^2)+\chi _0^4\}$$
(5)
Finally, we compare our results also to a quartic potential

$$(\mathrm{C}):U_0(\chi )=\lambda (\chi ^2\chi _0^2)^2$$
(6)
The quartic potential (C) is characteristic for two-flavor QCD $`(N_f=2)`$ (or for three flavors with small effects of the chiral anomaly). We emphasize that the investigation of the potentials (B) and (C) serves mainly the purpose of an estimate of uncertainties or errors from the unknown details of the shape of $`U_0`$ whereas we consider (A) as a more realistic potential.

As we have already mentioned, the dominant parameter for the characteristics of the chiral phase transition is $`U_0(0)`$. This measures in our convention the potential difference between the chiral symmetric state at $`\chi =0`$ and the vacuum at $`\chi =\chi _0`$. It gets a contribution from the chiral anomaly $`U_{an}(0)`$ and we have in our parametrization

$$U_0(0)=R_{an}^1U_{an}(0)$$
(7)
Here we denote by $`U_{an}(\chi )`$ the contribution of the chiral anomaly, i.e. the part $`R_{an}`$ in eq. (4) or (5). The size of the chiral anomaly in the vacuum, $`U_{an}(\chi _0)U_{an}(0)`$, is given for our simple potential (4) by $`U_{an}(0)`$. It is directly related  to the mass of the $`\eta ^{}`$-meson $`M_\eta ^{}=`$ 960 MeV and its decay constant $`f_\theta `$ 150 MeV

$$U_{an}(0)=\frac{f_\theta ^2M_\eta ^{}^2}{2N_f^2}=\frac{1}{N_f^2}10^2\mathrm{GeV}^4$$
(8)
The parameter $`R_{an}`$ is essentially fixed for instanton-dominated multiquark interactions $`(R_{an}1)`$. This sets the scale for $`U_0`$ in terms of the mass and decay constant of the $`\eta ^{}`$-meson. This is the basis for an interesting connection between the critical temperature $`T_c`$ on one side and $`M_\eta ^{}`$ and $`f_\theta `$ on the other side which will become apparent later.

The vacuum octet condensate $`\chi _0`$ is related to the effective gauge coupling $`g`$ and the vector meson mass $`\overline{\mu }_\rho `$ by $`\overline{\mu }_\rho =g(\overline{\mu }_\rho )\chi _0`$. The coupling $`g(\overline{\mu }_\rho )`$ can be estimated  from the $`\rho `$-decay width into two pions or charged leptons and we choose $`g`$(770 MeV)=6. For $`\overline{\mu }_\rho `$ = 770 MeV this yields $`\chi _0`$ 130 MeV. (In view of the uncertainties of this estimate one could also treat $`g(\overline{\mu }_\rho )`$ as an unknown parameter within a certain range around the estimate above.) The coupling $`\lambda `$ is now determined by

$$\lambda =\frac{R_{an}^1f_\theta ^2M_\eta ^{}^2}{2N_f^2\chi _0^4}=\frac{g^4(\overline{\mu }_\rho )}{2N_f^2R_{an}}\frac{f_\theta ^2M_\eta ^{}^2}{\overline{\mu }_\rho ^4}$$
(9)
Another characteristic quantity for the vacuum potential is the mass of the $`\sigma `$ resonance given by333This holds if the contribution of the color singlet to the kinetic term of $`\chi `$ is small.

$$M_\sigma ^2=\frac{3}{8}^2U_0/\chi ^2|_{\chi _0}$$
(10)
Phenomenology indicates $`M_\sigma 500`$ MeV for realistic values of the quark masses.

## 3 Effective masses

We will evaluate the temperature-dependent part of the effective potential $`\mathrm{\Delta }U(\chi ,T)`$ in a generalized mean field-type approximation. In a strong interaction environment reasonable results can only be obtained if the dependence of the effective particle masses on the mean field and the momentum scale is dealt with some care. In particular, the strong running of the couplings should not be neglected. Furthermore, we want to be able, in principle, to distinguish between a first or second order phase transition. In this respect it is crucial that the Goldstone bosons are treated correctly, since otherwise a second-order transition may be obscured by an insufficient approximation. This is not trivial in a mean field treatment of a linear model and we devote some attention to this issue in sects. 9-11.

More precisely, we include the effects of the fluctuations of the gluons, quarks, and pseudoscalar Goldstone bosons. Since in the low temperature phase gluons are associated to vector mesons and quarks to baryons , these fluctuations include all light particles. Our approximation is formally equivalent to a gas of non-interacting massive particles. However, the effects of the interactions appear indirectly through the dependence of the particle masses on the mean field and the momentum scale. In particular, the gluons and quarks have $`\chi `$-dependent masses

$$\mu _\rho ^2(\mu )=g^2(\mu )\chi ^2,M_q^2(\mu )=h_\chi ^2(\mu )\chi ^2$$
(11)
where we take into account the running of the gauge and Yukawa coupling. The running of the couplings and the choice of the renormalization scale $`\mu `$ are specified in Appendix A. From the average baryon mass in vacuum $`\overline{M}_q=h_\chi (\overline{\mu }_\rho )\chi _0=1150`$ MeV we extract444Note that actually only $`M_q(\chi =0)=0`$ and $`M_q(\chi =\chi _0)=\overline{M}_q`$ are known. The $`\chi `$-dependence of $`M_q(\chi )`$ could be more complicated than the ansatz used in (11). $`h_\chi (\overline{\mu }_\rho )=9`$. Beyond the running couplings further effects of the interactions of the gluons are omitted. We neglect here, in particular, the thermal mass corrections which contribute $`gT`$ to a chirally invariant quark mass and the gluom mass. (For simplicity, we also have neglected the mass splitting between the baryon octet and the singlet which are described by the nine quarks.)

For the Goldstone bosons the squared mass is given for all $`T`$ by the derivative of the potential

$$M_G^2=c_GU^{}=c_G\frac{U}{(\chi ^2)}=\frac{36}{7N_f}\frac{U}{(\chi ^2)}$$
(12)
Also the effective meson decay constant depends on $`\chi `$

$$f^2=c_F\chi ^2=\frac{7}{9}\chi ^2$$
(13)
As chiral symmetry restoration is approached for $`\chi 0`$ the effective decay constant decreases. The same holds for the chiral condensate $`<\overline{\psi }\psi >\chi `$. We note that the general relation

$$f^2M_G^2=\frac{2\chi }{N_f}\frac{U}{\chi }$$
(14)
implies

$$c_Gc_F=\frac{4}{N_f}$$
(15)
independently of the individual constants555The values used in (12) and (13) neglect the contribution of the singlet $`\overline{q}q`$-condensate. $`c_G`$ and $`c_F`$.

## 4 Thermal fluctuations

The various contributions of the thermal fluctuations are now evaluated as

$$\mathrm{\Delta }U=\mathrm{\Delta }_gU+\mathrm{\Delta }_qU+\mathrm{\Delta }_sU$$
(16)
with

$`\mathrm{\Delta }_gU=24J_B(g^2\chi ^2),\mathrm{\Delta }_qU=12N_fJ_F(h_\chi ^2\chi ^2),`$
$`\mathrm{\Delta }_sU=(N_f^21)[J_G(M_G^2)+\mathrm{\Delta }J_G]`$ (17)
Here we have defined the integrals

$$J(M^2,T)=\frac{1}{2}(_q^{(T)}\mathrm{ln}(q_T^2+M^2)_q^{(0)}\mathrm{ln}(q^2+M^2)$$
(18)
with $`_q^{(T)}=T_n\frac{d^3\stackrel{}{q}}{(2\pi )^3},_q^{(0)}=\frac{d^4q}{(2\pi )^4},q_T^2=(2\pi nT)^2+\stackrel{}{q}^2,q^2=q_0^2+\stackrel{}{q}^2`$. For the bosonic fluctuations $`J_B`$ and $`J_G`$ the sum is over integer Matsubara frequencies $`n`$. In contrast, for $`J_F`$ the Matsubara frequencies are half integer and therefore $`q_T^2=(2n+1)\pi T,n𝒵`$. The integrals $`J_B`$ and $`J_F`$ reflect the difference between the one loop expressions between nonzero and zero temperature for a given ”background field” $`\chi `$. They are well known in thermal field theory

$`J_B(M^2,T)`$ $`=`$ $`T{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{dqq^2}{2\pi ^2}}\mathrm{ln}(1\mathrm{exp}(\sqrt{q^2+M^2}/T))`$
$`J_F(M^2,T)`$ $`=`$ $`T{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{dqq^2}{2\pi ^2}}\mathrm{ln}(1+\mathrm{exp}(\sqrt{q^2+M^2}/T))`$ (19)
and can be expressed in terms of dimensionless integrals with $`m^2=M^2/T^2`$

$$J_{B(F)}=\frac{T^4}{2\pi ^2}_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑\stackrel{~}{q}\stackrel{~}{q}^2\mathrm{ln}(1\mathrm{exp}(\sqrt{\stackrel{~}{q}^2+m^2}))$$
(20)
We observe the Boltzmann suppression for large $`m`$, i.e.

$$\underset{m\mathrm{}}{lim}J_{B(F)}=\stackrel{}{(+)}\frac{T^4}{2\sqrt{2}}\left(\frac{m}{\pi }\right)^{3/2}e^m$$
(21)
The fluctuation integral $`J_G`$ for the Goldstone bosons has to be handled with care since $`M_G^2`$ may be negative for a certain range of $`\chi `$. The Goldstone boson mass $`M_G^2`$ vanishes at the temperature-dependent minimum of the potential $`\chi _0(T)`$. (In our notation $`\chi _0(0)\chi _0`$ corresponds to the parameter appearing in the zero-temperature effective potential (5).) The physics of the “nonconvex region” $`\chi <\chi _0(T)`$, where our approximation leads to $`U/(\chi ^2)<0`$, can be properly discussed  only in the context of a coarse-grained effective action as the effective average action . We give here some “ad hoc” prescriptions which catch the relevant physics for most (not all) situations. For negative $`U^{}`$ the fluctuations with momenta $`q^2<U^{}`$ should be replaced by spin waves, kinks or similar “tunneling” configurations which fluctuate between different minima of the potential . Here we simply omit the fluctuations with $`q^2<U^{}`$. As a consequence, $`J_G`$ equals $`J_B`$ for $`U^{}0`$, whereas the lower integration boundary for $`\stackrel{~}{q}`$ in eq. (20) is replaced by $`|m|`$ if $`m^2`$ is negative. With

$$J_G(M^2,T)=\{\begin{array}{ccc}J_B(M^2,T)\hfill & \mathrm{for}\hfill & M^20\hfill \\ \frac{T^4}{2\pi ^2}_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑yy\sqrt{y^2+|m^2|}\mathrm{ln}(1e^y)\hfill & \mathrm{for}\hfill & M^2<0\hfill \end{array}$$
(22)
we observe that $`J_G`$ is continuous in $`M^2`$. For $`M^2<0`$ the contribution of the Goldstone fluctuations is enhanced as compared to a gas of massless free particles. Finally, the correction $`\mathrm{\Delta }J_G`$ in eq. (4) is related to the appropriate treatment of the running couplings and specified in Appendix A.

Our treatment of the composite scalar fluctuations leads to some shortcomings. The perhaps most apparent one concerns the behavior of $`\mathrm{\Delta }U`$ for very high $`T`$. In this region the gluons have only two helicities and the factor 24 multiplying $`J_B`$ should be replaced by 16. In fact, a more correct formulation would treat the $`2(N_c^21)`$ transversal gluon degrees of freedom separately from the longitudinal degrees of freedom. The latter ones are associated to the scalar sector by the Higgs mechanism. In contrast to the fundamental scalar in the electroweak sector of the standard model the octet $`\chi `$ is a composite and the scalars should not be counted as independent degrees of freedom at high $`T`$. In a more complete treatment this is realized by large $`T`$-dependent mass terms for all scalars which suppress their contribution effectively for large $`T`$. The neglection of this effect in our rough treatment leads to an overestimate of the bosonic contribution666The suppression of the Goldstone boson contribution $`J_G`$ at large $`T`$ is included properly in our approximation. at large $`T`$ by a factor 3/2.

On the other hand, in the low temperature region we have neglected bosonic contributions from the $`\sigma `$-resonance or the scalar octet ($`a^\pm `$ etc.) which have a similar mass as the vector mesons. This results in an underestimate of the bosonic contribution which is particularly serious near a second-order or weak first-order phase transition. At a second-order phase transition all scalars contained in an appropriate linear representation become massless. In the chiral limit the minimal set are 144 real scalars for $`N_f=3`$ and 32 real scalars for $`N_f=2`$. In contrast, our treatment accounts only for $`(N_c^21)+(N_f^21)`$ massless scalars at the phase transition.

Another shortcoming is the neglection of temperature effects in the instanton-induced interactions. They become important for $`\pi T\mu _\rho `$ and can be neglected for low $`T`$. It is conceivable that these effects influence substantially the details of the phase transition. Despite of all that we remind that the gross features of the equation of state and the value of the critical temperature are relatively robust quantities. We will see below that an error of 20 % in the number of effective degrees of freedom in the quark-gluon phase at $`T_c`$ influences the value of $`T_c`$ only by 5 %. A similar statement holds for a
20 % error in the estimate of $`U_0(0)U_0(\chi _0)`$. For a first rough picture of the implications of the color octet condensate on the chiral phase transition our approximation of the thermal fluctuations (16) seems therefore appropriate.

## 5 High temperature phase transition
for vanishing quark masses

For a given form of the vacuum potential $`U_0`$ the temperature dependence of the effective potential and the temperature-dependent masses of the pseudo-particles can now be computed. We concentrate here on a potential that is dominated by instanton effects reflecting the chiral anomaly and take $`R_{an}=0.9`$ in eq. (4). In table 1 we present for the chiral limit(vanishing current-quark masses) the values of the vector-meson mass $`\overline{\mu }_\rho `$ (input), the decay constant $`f`$ and the $`\sigma `$-mass $`M_\sigma `$ for the vacuum. The results for the instanton-induced potential are denoted by (A). For our parameters realistic values of $`\overline{\mu }_\rho ,f`$ and $`M_\sigma `$ are obtained for a realistic average current quark mass (see sect. 11, table 2). They differ from the chiral limit shown in table 1. In order to investigate the influence of the uncertainties in the vacuum potential on the thermal properties, we also compare with corresponding results for the potentials (B) (C) in eqs. (5), (6). (For the potentials (B), (C) we have not optimized the input parameters $`\overline{\mu }_\rho ,g(\overline{\mu }_\rho ),h_\chi (\overline{\mu }_\rho )`$ with respect to the observed particle masses for nonzero current quark masses.)

As the temperature increases, we find a first-order phase transition. The critical temperature $`T_c`$ is indicated in table 1, as well as the Higgs contribution to the mass of the vector mesons and baryons slightly below the critical temperature $`(\overline{\mu }_\rho ^{(SSB)}(T_c)`$ and $`M_q^{(SSB)}(T_c)`$). We observe that the decrease of the effective masses $`\overline{\mu }_\rho (T)`$ and $`M_q(T)`$ for increasing temperature is largely determined by the temperature dependence of the effective gauge and Yukawa couplings and only to a smaller extent by the decrease of the expectation value $`\chi _0(T)`$. We observe that the true screening masses get temperature corrections which increase $`T`$ and become important near $`T_c`$. Also the maximum of the vector meson spectral function, which is relevant for dilepton production, differs from the screening mass. As $`T`$ increases beyond $`T_c`$, the absolute minimum of $`U(\chi ,T)`$ jumps to $`\chi =0`$ and the gluons and quarks (or vector-mesons and baryons) become massless in our approximation. The equation of state approaches rapidly the one for a free gas of gluons and quarks (see sect. 6 for details).

Since the potentials (B)(C) are qualitatively quite different from (A), we believe that the range $`T_c`$ 130-160 MeV roughly covers the uncertainty from the choice of the vacuum potential $`U_0`$. We note that the critical temperature for the instanton-induced potential (A) comes close to the value $`T_c=154\pm 8`$ MeV suggested by a recent lattice simulation . If we include only the transversal gluon degrees of freedom for $`\chi =0`$ (see sect. 4) the value of $`T_c`$ becomes somewhat larger by about 4 %.

Table 1: First-order phase transition in the chiral limit $`(m_{PS}=0)`$.

| vacuum | | | | critical temperature | | | |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $`U_0`$ | $`\overline{\mu }_\rho `$ | $`f`$ | $`M_\sigma `$ | $`T_c`$ | $`\overline{\mu }_\rho ^{(SSB)}(T_c)`$ | $`M_q^{(SSB)}(T_c)`$ | $`\tau (T_c)`$ |
| A | 700 | 68 | 1570 | 154 | 290 | 580 | 0.37 |
| B | 770 | 113 | 580 | 134 | 440 | 700 | 0.66 |
| C | 770 | 113 | 480 | 131 | 450 | 720 | 0.71 |

## 6 High temperature phase

The results of a numerical evaluation of $`U(\chi ,T)`$ can be understood qualitatively by simple analytical considerations. For large temperature $`T>M`$ the integrals $`J`$ are dominated by their values at $`M=0`$

$$J_B(0,T)=J_G(0,T)=\frac{\pi ^2}{90}T^4,J_F(0,T)=\frac{7\pi ^2}{720}T^4$$
(23)
If the minimum of $`U`$ for large $`T`$ occurs at $`\chi =0`$, the gauge bosons and quarks are effectively massless. The pressure is then given by

$$p=U(\chi =0)=\frac{16\pi ^2}{90}T^4+\frac{12N_f\pi ^2}{90}\left(\frac{7}{8}\right)T^4U_0(0)$$
(24)
We recognize the contribution of a free gas of $`2(N_c^21)=16`$ bosonic and $`4N_cN_f=12N_f`$ fermionic massless degrees of freedom. The scalar part $`\mathrm{\Delta }_sU`$ is subleading and will be neglected (see sect. 4). The negative contribution $`U_0(0)=\lambda \chi _0^4`$ accounts in our approximation for interaction effects related to the octet condensation. It becomes irrelevant only for large $`T`$ whereas for temperatures near $`T_c`$ its effects cannot be neglected. For large $`T`$ the pressure approaches rapidly the Stefan-Boltzmann limit

$$p_{SB}=\left(\frac{8}{45}+\frac{7}{60}N_f\right)\pi ^2T^4$$
(25)
The energy density

$$ϵ=UT\frac{U}{T}=U_0(0)+\frac{8}{15}(1+\frac{21N_f}{32})\pi ^2T^4$$
(26)
deviates from the one for a relativistic gluon-quark gas due to $`U_0`$. One obtains the equation of state

$$ϵ3p=4U_0(0),\frac{ϵ3p}{ϵ+p}=\frac{45}{(8+\frac{21}{4}N_f)\pi ^2}\frac{U_0(0)}{T^4}$$
(27)
This yields for $`N_f=3`$

$$\tau =\frac{ϵ3p}{ϵ+p}0.192\frac{U_0(0)}{T^4}=\tau (T_c)\frac{T_c^4}{T^4},\frac{p}{ϵ}=\frac{1\tau }{3+\tau }$$
(28)
We have indicated the value of $`\tau (T_c)`$ obtained from the numerical evaluation of eq. (16) in the chiral limit in table 1 (and for realistic quark masses in table 2 in sect. 11). The small value of $`\tau `$ for the instanton-induced potential (A) implies that the equation of state for a relativistic plasma is particularly rapidly approached as the temperature increases beyond $`T_c`$. The fast turnover to a relativistic plasma is consistent with findings in lattice gauge theories .

In a more accurate treatment the free energy of the quark gluon gas and the Stefan-Boltzmann law receive additional perturbative corrections also for large $`T`$. The dominant corrections can be incorporated in our picture by adding in eq. (11) the temperature dependent mass terms . We emphasize, however, that the contribution $`U_0(0)`$ in eq. (24) remains as an important non-perturbative effect.

## 7 Chiral phase transition

For a first-order transition the critical temperature $`T_c`$ can be related to $`U_0(0)`$. Let us denote the value of the potential in the hadronic phase at $`T_c`$ by $`U_{SSB}=U(\chi _0(T_c))`$. Equating this with eq. (24) yields

$$T_c^4=\frac{45}{8\pi ^2}\left(1+\frac{21N_f}{32}\right)^1(U_0(0)U_{SSB})$$
(29)
where we have neglected $`\mathrm{\Delta }_sU`$ since the Goldstone boson fluctuations are not relevant at $`\chi =0`$ for a sufficiently strong first-order transition. As long as $`T_c`$ remains much smaller than the mass of the gauge bosons $`\overline{\mu }_\rho ^{(SSB)}`$ and fermions $`M_q^{(SSB)}`$ in the phase with broken chiral symmetry, their contribution to $`U_{SSB}`$ remains strongly Boltzmann-suppressed (cf. table 1). For a strong first-order phase transition the quantity $`U_{SSB}`$ is therefore dominated by the fluctuations of the $`N_f^21`$ Goldstone bosons. If $`\chi _0(T)`$ is close to $`\chi _0=\chi _0(0)`$ we can also neglect the difference $`U_0(\chi _0(T))U_0(\chi _0)`$ and $`U_{SSB}`$ is given by the contribution of a free gas of Goldstone bosons

$$U_{SSB}=\frac{(N_f^21)\pi ^2}{90}T_c^4$$
(30)
As a consequence, the critical temperature is given by $`U_0(0)`$ quite independently of the details of the shape of $`U_0(\chi )`$ or the thermal fluctuations

$$T_c^4=\frac{45}{8\pi ^2}(1+\frac{21N_f}{32}\frac{N_f^21}{16})^1U_0(0)=0.231U_0(0)$$
(31)
(For the quantitative estimate we use $`N_f=3`$.) For the approximation (28) this yields an equation of state

$$\frac{ϵ3p}{ϵ+p}\tau (T_c)\frac{T_c^4}{T^4}0.83\frac{T_c^4}{T^4}$$
(32)
and we see again that a free relativistic gas of gluons and quarks is reached rapidly as $`T`$ increases beyond $`T_c`$. The pressure is continuous at $`T_c`$ and directly given by $`p(T_c)=U_{SSB}`$. Comparing eq. (30) with the Stefan-Boltzmann value (25) yields $`p(T_c)/p_{SB}=\frac{16}{95}\left(\frac{3}{37}\right)`$ for $`N_f=3(2)`$.

Eq. (31) relates the critical temperature to the properties of the $`\eta ^{}`$-meson and the fractional contribution $`R_{an}`$ of the chiral anomaly to $`U_0(0)`$ (cf. eq. (8))

$$T_c=R_{an}^{1/4}N_f^{1/2}221\mathrm{MeV}$$
(33)
For $`R_{an}=(0.3,0.5,0.8,1)`$ and $`N_f=3`$ this yields $`T_c=(173,152,135,128)`$ MeV. Fluctuations in the SSB-phase beyond the pions (30) further lower the value of $`U_{SSB}`$. This replaces in eq. (33) $`R_{an}`$ by $`\overline{R}`$, with $`\overline{R}<R_{an}`$, leading to an increase of $`T_c`$. For three-flavor QCD our numerical results are consistent with this qualitative picture of a strong first-order phase transition.

The quantitative estimates (31)-(33) are only valid if the minimum at $`\chi _0(T_c)`$ is still near $`\chi _0`$. This depends on the influence of the Goldstone bosons and, in particular, on the ratio between $`T_c`$ and the meson decay constant $`f`$ (see sect. 11). For a weak first-order transition or a second-order transition (for $`N_f=2`$) the potential difference $`U_0(\chi _0(T_c))`$ has to be included in $`U_{SSB}`$ (30). This contribution lowers the critical temperature. On the other hand, the gauge boson and quark fluctuations may not be negligible anymore for low enough $`\chi _0(T_c)`$. This effect enhances the critical temperature. The difference between the rough estimates (33) and (32) and the numerical conputation (table 1) is related to these effects777The numerical computation also uses 24 gauge boson degrees of freedom (eq. (4)) instead of 16 for the analytical discussion in sects. 7 and 8. This lowers $`T_c`$ by 4 %.. It is particularly pronounced for the potential (A) for which the gauge boson mass in the SSB-phase is already considerably smaller at $`T_c`$ than at $`T=0`$.

In the two-flavor case the chiral phase transition in QCD ressembles in many respects the electroweak phase transition. The vacuum potential is analytic in $`\chi ^2`$ at $`\chi ^2=0`$ such that a first-order transition can only be induced by the fluctuations of the gauge bosons. In this analogy the octet replaces the Higgs-scalar and $`M_\sigma `$ plays the role of the mass of the Higgs scalar $`M_H`$. Also the gluons replace the weak gauge bosons and the quarks play the role of the top quark in the electroweak theory. The electroweak phase diagram shows a first-order phase transition for small $`M_H`$ and one may expect the same for QCD for small $`M_\sigma `$. In the electroweak theory this transition ends for some critical $`M_{H,c}`$ in a second-order transition, whereas for $`M_H>M_{H,c}`$ the transition is replaced by a continuous crossover , ,. In the case of QCD with vanishing quark masses one has, however, an additional important ingredient, namely the existence of an order parameter and Goldstone bosons. In fact, in the absence of current quark masses an order parameter $`\chi _0(T)0`$ breaks spontaneously a global symmetry. In consequence, there must be a phase transition as $`\chi _0(T)`$ reaches zero when the critical temperature $`T_c`$ is reached from below. This holds for arbitrarily large $`M_\sigma `$. In two-flavor QCD with vanishing quark masses a second-order phase transition replaces the crossover of the electroweak theory. For nonzero quark mass the analogy is even closer, with a change from a first-order transition to crossover in dependence on $`M_\sigma `$. In contrast to the electroweak theory, however, $`M_\sigma `$ is not a free parameter but can, in principle, be computed in QCD. An important ingredient for the determination of the characteristics of the phase transition is the size of the gauge coupling which is large in QCD. The realization of a second-order transition/crossover seems therefore quite plausible in two-flavor QCD.

## 8 Spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking for $`T<T_c`$

For an understanding of the temperature effects in the hadronic phase for $`T<T_c`$ we need the value of $`\chi _0(T)`$. The octet expectation value in thermal equilibrium obeys the field equation

$$\frac{U}{\chi }=2\chi \frac{U}{(\chi ^2)}=2\chi U^{}=j_\chi $$
(34)
where $`j_\chi =0`$ in absence of quark masses. For a determination of the temperature dependence of the order parameter $`\chi _0(T)`$ it is useful to investigate the field equation analytically. For the gluon contribution one finds from (4)

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_gU^{}\frac{}{(\chi ^2)}\mathrm{\Delta }_gU=12\widehat{g}^2(\mu _\rho (T))I_1^{(B)}(\mu _\rho ^2(T),T)$$
(35)
Here

$$\widehat{g}^2=\frac{\mu _\rho ^2(T)}{(\chi ^2)}=g^2(\mu _T)\left\{1\frac{\mu _\rho ^2}{\mu _\rho ^2+(\pi T)^2}\frac{(\beta _g/g)(\mu _T)}{(\beta _g/g)(\mu _\rho )}(1\frac{g}{\beta _g}(\mu _\rho ))^1\right\}$$
(36)
reflects the running of the gauge coupling in dependence on the temperature-dependent gluon mass

$$\mu _\rho ^2(T)=g^2(\mu _T^2)\chi ^2$$
(37)
The integral

$`I_1^{(B)}(M^2,T)`$ $`=`$ $`2{\displaystyle \frac{}{M^2}}J_B(M^2,T)`$ (38)
$`=`$ $`T{\displaystyle \underset{n}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{d^3\stackrel{}{q}}{(2\pi )^3}\frac{1}{\stackrel{}{q}^2+(2\pi nT)^2+M^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{d^4q}{(2\pi )^4}\frac{1}{q^2+M^2}}`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{T^2}{2\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑y{\displaystyle \frac{\sqrt{y^2+2my}}{e^{y+m}1}}`$
contains for large $`T`$ terms quadratic, linear and logarithmic in $`T`$

$$I_1^{(B)}\frac{T^2}{12}\frac{TM}{4\pi }+\frac{M^2}{16\pi ^2}\mathrm{ln}\frac{(\stackrel{~}{c}T)^2+M^2}{M^2}$$
(39)
More precisely, the expression (39) applies for $`M^2\pi ^2T^2`$ and we will drop the logarithm in the following. We observe an infrared divergence in $`I_1^{(B)}/M^2`$ for $`M0`$.

The fermionic contribution reads

$$\frac{}{(\chi ^2)}\mathrm{\Delta }_qU=6N_f\widehat{h}^2I_1^{(F)}(h_\chi ^2\chi ^2,T)$$
(40)
with

$`\widehat{h}^2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{}{(\chi ^2)}}(h_\chi ^2(\mu _T)\chi ^2)`$
$`=`$ $`h_\chi ^2(\mu _T)\left\{1{\displaystyle \frac{\mu _\rho ^2}{\mu _\rho ^2+(\pi T)^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{(\beta _h/h_\chi )(\mu _T)}{(\beta _g/g)(\mu _\rho )}}\left(1{\displaystyle \frac{g}{\beta _g}}(\mu _\rho )\right)^1\right\}`$
The corresponding integral

$`I_1^{(F)}(M^2,T)`$ $`=`$ $`2{\displaystyle \frac{}{M^2}}J_F(M^2,T)`$ (42)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{T^2}{2\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑y{\displaystyle \frac{\sqrt{y^2+2my}}{e^{y+m}+1}}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{24}}T^2+\mathrm{}`$
involves half-integer Matsubara frequencies and does not show an infrared divergence.

The Goldstone-boson integral $`I_1^{(G)}=2J_G/M^2`$ equals $`I_1^B`$ for $`M^20`$. For negative $`M^2`$ it becomes

$$I_1^{(G)}=\frac{T^2}{2\pi ^2}_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑yy(y^2+|m^2|)^{1/2}\mathrm{ln}(1e^y)=\frac{T^2}{12}+\mathrm{\Delta }I_1^{(G)}$$
(43)
For small values of $`|M|/T`$ one finds

$$\mathrm{\Delta }I_1^{(G)}=\frac{T|M|}{2\pi ^2}\left(\mathrm{ln}\frac{2|M|}{T}1\right)+\mathrm{}$$
(44)
and we see that $`I_1^{(G)}`$ is continuous at $`M^2=0`$. On the other hand, for large $`|M|/T`$ the result is

$$I_1^{(G)}=\frac{\widehat{c}}{4\pi ^2}\frac{T^3}{|M|}+\mathrm{},\widehat{c}=_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑y\frac{y^2}{e^y1}2.4041$$
(45)
For sufficiently large $`T`$ a positive temperature-dependent mass-like term dominates the potential derivative at the origin

$$\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }U}{(\chi ^2)}_{|\chi =0}=\left(\widehat{g}^2+\frac{N_f}{4}\widehat{h}_\chi ^2\right)T^2$$
(46)
This overwhelms any classical contribution and there is therefore no nontrivial minimum of $`U(\chi ,T)`$ for $`\chi 0`$. Chiral symmetry is restored $`(\chi _0(T)=0)`$ and the gluons do no longer acquire a mass from the octet condensate. On the other hand, for $`T<T_c`$ the absolute minimum of the potential occurs for $`\chi _0(T)0`$, corresponding to a nontrivial solution of eq. (34).

## 9 Goldstone-boson fluctuations

For a determination of $`\chi _0(T)`$ in the low temperature phase with chiral symmetry breaking the Goldstone boson fluctuations are important. They dominate the low-temperature behavior and play an important role at a possible second-order phase transition. The correct treatment of the Goldstone bosons in a mean field-type approach is rather subtle due to complications in the infrared physics for massless bosons. (This also applies to gauge bosons.) We show in the next section that our renormalization-group motivated prescriptions lead to the correct behavior at low $`T`$ and we demonstrate in appendix B that they also can account888A naive mean field treatment typically produces a first-order transition when massless bosons are present. This is due to the nonanalytic “cubic term” in the expansion of $`J_B`$ (eq. (4) in powers of $`M`$. for the possibility of a second-order phase transition. The latter is particularly relevant for the case of two light quark flavors or for realistic QCD where the physical strange quark mass seems to correspond to a very weak first order transition or a crossover, in the vicinity of a second order transition for an nearby critical strange quark mass.

The Goldstone boson mass involves the derivative of the temperature-dependent effective potential $`M_G^2=c_GU^{}`$, which obeys for all $`T`$

$`U^{}`$ $`=`$ $`B(\chi )+{\displaystyle \frac{N_f^21}{2}}c_GU^{\prime \prime }\mathrm{\Delta }I_1^{(G)}(c_GU^{},T)+\mathrm{}`$ (47)
$`B(\chi )`$ $`=`$ $`U_0^{}+{\displaystyle \frac{N_f^21}{24}}c_GT^2U_0^{\prime \prime }+12\widehat{g}^2I_1^{(B)}(g^2\chi ^2,T)6N_f\widehat{h}^2I_1^{(F)}(h_\chi ^2\chi ^2,T)`$
Here the dots stand for corrections arising from $`\mathrm{\Delta }J_G`$ (A.3) which vanish for $`U^{}=0`$ and are negligible in the vicinity of an extremum. ¿From $`\mathrm{\Delta }I_1^{(G)}(0,T)=0`$ one infers a simple equation for the extrema of $`U`$ away from the origin. The condition $`U^{}=0`$ is realized for $`B=0`$ or

$$U_0^{}+\frac{N_f^21}{24}c_GU_0^{\prime \prime }T^2=6N_f\widehat{h}^2I_1^{(F)}(h_\chi ^2(\mu _T)\chi _0^2,T)12\widehat{g}^2I_1^{(B)}(g^2(\mu _T)\chi _0^2,T)$$
(48)
where we recall the definitions

$$U_0^{}=\frac{1}{2\chi }\frac{U_0}{\chi },U_0^{^{\prime \prime }}=\frac{1}{4\chi ^2}(\frac{^2U_0}{\chi ^2}\frac{1}{\chi }\frac{U_0}{\chi })$$
(49)
For low temperature the r.h.s. of eq. (48) is Boltzmann-suppressed and can be neglected.

The differential equation (47) for $`U^{}(\chi )`$ can be turned into an algebraic “Schwinger-Dyson equation” by replacing $`U^{^{\prime \prime }}`$ by $`U_0^{^{\prime \prime }}`$. This is reasonable for $`U_0^{\prime \prime }0`$, whereas for negative $`U_0^{\prime \prime }`$ we omit the contribution $`U_0^{\prime \prime }`$ in $`B`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }I_1^{(G)}`$ in eq. (47) such that $`U^{}=B`$. These prescriptions999In regions of the potential where the gauge boson and fermion fluctuations are important a better approximation would replace $`U_0^{\prime \prime }U_0^{\prime \prime }+\mathrm{\Delta }_gU^{\prime \prime }+\mathrm{\Delta }_qU^{\prime \prime }`$, similar to eq. (A.2). determine $`U^{}`$ for given values of $`\chi `$ and $`T`$. Not too far from the minimum one may further approximate (for $`U_0^{\prime \prime }0`$)

$$U^{}=B\frac{N_f^21}{8\pi }c_G^{3/2}U_0^{\prime \prime }T\left(\sqrt{U^{}\mathrm{\Theta }(U^{})}\frac{2}{\pi }\sqrt{U^{}\mathrm{\Theta }(U^{})}(\mathrm{ln}(2|U^{}|/T)1)\right)$$
(50)
A reasonable approximate formula for $`U^{}`$ used for our numerical computation is given by

$`U^{}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}sign(B)(\sqrt{E^2+4|B|}E)^2,`$
$`E`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{N_f^21}{8\pi }}c_G^{3/2}TU_0^{\prime \prime }\mathrm{\Theta }(U_0^{\prime \prime })`$ (51)
This implies that for small $`B`$ in the vicinity of the minimum where $`B\chi \chi _0`$, one has101010This holds for $`E>0`$. Note that for $`U^{}\chi \chi _0`$ the nonanalyticity in $`\mathrm{\Delta }I_1^{(G)}`$ would destabilize the minimum. $`U^{}(\chi \chi _0)^2`$.

## 10 Low temperature pion gas and chiral perturbation theory

The thermodynamics for low temperature should be described by a gas of interacting pions. Any analytical computation which pretends to describe the transition from a pion gas at low $`T`$ to a quark gluon plasma at high $`T`$ should reproduce the low temperature limit correctly. Indeed, in our formulation only the massless or very light particles contribute for low $`T`$. In particular, around the minimum of $`U`$ near $`\chi _0`$ both the baryons and the vector mesons (or, equivalently, the quarks and the gluons) are heavy and exponentially Boltzmann-suppressed. Only the pions are light and one expects that they completely dominate the temperature effects at low $`T`$ for $`\chi `$ near $`\chi _0`$.

The effects of a thermal interacting pion gas are described by chiral perturbation theory  which predicts for the chiral condensate111111Here we have neglected the $`T`$-dependence of the wave function renormalization which relates $`\chi `$ and $`<\overline{\psi }\psi >`$.

$$\frac{\chi _0(T)}{\chi _0(0)}=\frac{<\overline{\psi }\psi >(T)}{<\overline{\psi }\psi >(0)}=1\frac{N_f^21}{N_f}\frac{T^2}{12f^2}\frac{N_f^21}{2N_f^2}\left(\frac{T^2}{12f^2}\right)^2+\mathrm{}$$
(52)
Within the nonlinear setting of chiral perturbation theory one can understand the temperature effects of the interacting pions on the chiral condensate in a staightforward way. In particular, it is obvious that the lowest two orders can only depend on the ratio $`T/f`$ . In order to describe the phase transition and the high temperature phase we are bound, however, to use a linear description for the scalar fields. The correct reproduction of lowest order chiral perturbation theory is not trivial in a linear setting and can be used as a test for the correctness of the particular formulation of the meanfield approximation.

In our picture we can parametrize the effective potential in the vicinity of the minimum $`\chi _0`$ by $`(U=U_0+\mathrm{\Delta }U)`$

$`U_0`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{4}{3}}M_\sigma ^2(\chi \chi _0)^2`$
$`\mathrm{\Delta }U`$ $`=`$ $`(N_f^21)\left({\displaystyle \frac{\pi ^2}{90}}T^4+{\displaystyle \frac{c_G}{24}}T^2U_0/(\chi ^2)\right)`$ (53)
Up to the $`\chi `$-independent contribution $`T^4`$ this yields

$$U=\frac{4}{3}M_\sigma ^2\{(\chi \chi _0)^2+\frac{c_G(N_f^21)}{24}\frac{T^2}{\chi }(\chi \chi _0)\}$$
(54)
and one infers that the $`T`$-dependent minimum is independent of $`M_\sigma `$

$$\frac{\chi _0(T)}{\chi _0(0)}=1\frac{c_Gc_F}{4}(N_f^21)\frac{T^2}{12f^2}\frac{\chi _0^2(0)}{\chi _0^2(T)}$$
(55)
With $`c_Gc_F=4/N_f`$ (cf. eq. (15)) we can verify that the lowest order of an expansion in $`(\chi _0(T)\chi _0(0))/\chi _0(0)`$ corresponds indeed to chiral perturbation theory. This shows the consistency of our treatment of the scalar fluctuations as discussed in Appendix A. A lack of care in the treatment of the scalar fluctuations easily leads to inconsistency with chiral perturbation theory even in lowest order. In fact, it is crucial that the term $`T^2`$ in $`\mathrm{\Delta }U`$ (eq. (10) involves the derivative of $`U_0`$ without additional temperature corrections to the potential.

## 11 Nonzero quark masses

We finally discuss the effect of the quark masses in the limit where they are all equal. A quark mass term adds to the potential a linear121212We omit here nonlinear quark mass corrections from the chiral anomaly. We also observe that the linear term actually appears for the $`\overline{q}q`$-color singlet $`\sigma `$ and is transmuted to $`\chi `$ only by integrating out $`\sigma `$. This results again in a nonlinearity of $`U_m`$. We consider $`U_m`$ as an approximation for $`TT_c`$. There is actually only a singlet and no octet condensate in the high temperature phase for nonvanishing quark masses. piece

$$U_j=U_0+U_m,U_m=j_\chi (\chi \widehat{\chi }_0)$$
(56)
Therefore the location $`\overline{\chi }_0`$ of the minimum of $`U+U_m`$ obeys for arbitrary $`T`$

$$\frac{U}{\chi }(\overline{\chi }_0)=j_\chi $$
(57)
Here $`j_\chi `$ is proportional to the current quark mass and can be related to the mass of the octet of light pseudo-Goldstone bosons $`(\pi ,K,\eta )`$ by

$$m_{PS}^2(T)=c_G\frac{U}{(\chi ^2)}(\overline{\chi }_0(T))=\frac{c_G}{2\overline{\chi }_0(T)}j_\chi $$
(58)
In particular, $`\overline{\chi }_0=\overline{\chi }_0(0)`$is determined by the vacuum mass $`m_{PS}=m_{PS}(0)`$

$$U_0^{}(\overline{\chi }_0)=m_{PS}^2/c_G$$
(59)
Vanishing pressure in the vacuum (at $`T=0`$) requires $`U_0(\overline{\chi }_0)+U_m(\overline{\chi }_0)=0`$ or

$$\widehat{\chi }_0=\overline{\chi }_0U_0(\overline{\chi }_0)/j_\chi $$
(60)
For a small quark mass (small $`j_\chi `$) both $`\overline{\chi }_0`$ and $`\widehat{\chi }_0`$ are given approximately by $`\chi _0`$.

Near the chiral limit we can understand various quark mass effects on the chiral phase transition analytically:

(1) The vacuum expectation value $`\chi _0`$ increases and $`U_0(0)+U_m(0)`$ acquires an additional positive contribution $`j_\chi \widehat{\chi }_0`$. Both effects enhance $`T_c`$.

(2) In the high-temperature phase the minimum occurs at $`\chi _s(T)0`$. For a first-order transition this reduces the difference between $`U_j`$ in the low and high temperature phases and therefore diminishes somewhat the increase of $`T_c`$. Also the quarks get a nonzero mass in the high-temperature phase, $`h_\chi \chi _s(T)`$. This decreases the pressure of the fluctuations at given $`T`$ and therefore enhances the value of $`T_c`$ needed in order to compensate the difference in $`U_j`$. For small $`j_\chi `$ this effect is only quadratic in $`j_\chi `$ and the linear effect in $`U_j(\chi _s(T))U_j(\chi _0(T))`$ dominates.

(3) As $`T_c`$ and $`\chi _s(T_c)`$ increase with increasing $`j_\chi `$, the difference between the two local minima characteristic for the first-order transition becomes less and less pronounced. Finally, the transition line ends for a critical $`j_{\chi ,c}`$ at a second-order transition, with crossover for $`j_\chi >j_{\chi ,c}`$. The situation is similar to the liquid-gas transition.

(4) In case of a second-order transition for $`j_\chi =0`$ the chiral transition turns to a crossover for all nonzero $`j_\chi `$.

In summary, nonvanishing quark masses enhance the critical temperature and make transitions less pronounced. The case of realistic QCD with $`m_sm_{u,d}`$ is somewhat more complicated since the expectation values in the high temperature phase differ in the strange and nonstrange directions. In case of a strong first-order transition this modification is, however, only of little quantitative relevance. On the other hand, one may envisage a situation where for $`m_s0,m_u=m_d=0`$ the critical behavior ressembles two-flavor QCD.

Our numerical evaluation of $`U(\chi ,T)`$ is easily exploited for nonvanishing quark masses. They only enter into the determination of the location of the minima at $`\chi _s(T)`$ and $`\overline{\chi }_0(T)`$ via eq. (58). We indicate the vacuum properties for anomaly-dominated potentials $`(R_{an}=0.9)`$ in table 2 for the same values of the input parameters as used in table 1. Comparison between the two tables provides an estimate of the effect of nonzero degenerate quark masses. We employ  here a “realistic” average mass $`m_{PS}^2=(390\mathrm{MeV})^2\frac{1}{3}(2M_K^2+M_\pi ^2)`$ which corresponds to the neglection of $`SU(3)`$-violating mass splittings in the pseudoscalar octet. We observe a sizeable increase of $`f=\sqrt{7/9}\overline{\chi }_0`$ and a corresponding increase in the baryon mass131313Our choice of the Yukawa coupling leads to too large values of the baryon mass in vacuum for the potentials (B)(C). This is only of little quantitative relevance for the results presented in this note and can be corrected easily by the choice of a smaller Yukawa coupling. $`M_q=h_\chi (\overline{\mu }_\rho )\overline{\chi }_0`$ and vector meson mass $`\overline{\mu }_\rho =g(\overline{\mu }_\rho )\overline{\chi }_0`$ in the vacuum.

For all three potentials (A)(B)(C) we find a first-order transition for $`m_{PS}`$=390 MeV. The critical temperature $`T_c`$ is increased substantially as compared to the chiral limit, as can be inferred from table 2.

Table 2: First-order phase transition for realistic average quark masses $`(m_{PS}=390`$ MeV).

| vacuum | | | | critical temperature | | | |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $`U_0`$ | $`\overline{\mu }_\rho `$ | $`f`$ | $`M_\sigma `$ | $`T_c`$ | $`\overline{\mu }_\rho ^{(SSB)}(T_c)`$ | $`M_q^{(SSB)}(T_c)`$ | $`\tau (T_c)`$ |
| A | 770 | 116 | 460 | 170 | 290 | 600 | 0.53 |
| B | 800 | 132 | 770 | 180 | 470 | 800 | 0.77 |
| C | 810 | 142 | 660 | 183 | 490 | 840 | 0.77 |

The mass effect on the critical temperature is moderate for our instanton-induced potential (A) for which the increase of about 10 % is roughly consistent with a recent lattice simulation . In this respect the instanton-induced potential computed in  does apparently much better than the two polynomial potentials (B)(C) that we use for comparison. We point out, however, that the neglection of the quark mass effects for the instanton-induced interaction leads to a substantial uncertainty in the quark mass dependence at the present stage.

## 12 $`Z_3`$-Vortices

In an attempt to find distinctive features of our scenario which could be tested by lattice simultations, we may look at topologically stable excitations. The octet condensate in the low temperature phase indeed implies the stability of macroscopic $`Z_3`$-vortices. They are absent in the high temperature phase. In the early universe, such strings would have been produced as topological defects during the QCD-phase transition. The string tension is typically of the order $`\sigma m_\rho ^2`$ such that $`G\sigma (m_\rho /M_p)^2`$ is tiny. Observational consequences of the production of typically one string per horizon at the time of the phase transition are not obvious - in particular such strings are not candidates for seeds of a later galaxy formation.

As topological defects, the $`Z_3`$-vortices correspond to the nontrivial homotopy group $`\pi _1(SU(3)/Z_3)=Z_3`$. The color octet (and singlet) scalars transform trivially under the center of the color group, similar to the gluons. Any classical bosonic field configuration is therefore invariant under $`Z_3`$-transformations. Once the color group gets ”spontaneously broken” by the octet condensate, the $`Z_3`$-vortices become topologically stable. As an example, consider a static vortex in the z-direction with octet scalar field

$$\chi _{ijab}=\frac{1}{2\sqrt{6}}\chi (r)(\lambda _z)_{ab}\left(v^{}(\phi )\lambda _zv(\phi )\right)_{ji}$$
(61)
Here $`v`$ is given by a $`\phi `$-dependent gauge transformation

$$v(\phi )=exp\left(\frac{i}{\sqrt{3}}\phi \lambda _8\right)$$
(62)
such that a rotation around $`2\pi `$ corresponds to an element of $`Z_3`$

$$exp(\frac{2\pi i}{\sqrt{3}}\lambda _8)=exp(\frac{2\pi i}{3})$$
(63)
The scalar field is therefore well defined and free of singularities provided $`\chi (r)`$ behaves properly at the origin, e. g. $`\chi (r=0)=0`$. For $`r\mathrm{}`$ we assume that $`\chi (r)`$ approaches the expectation value $`\chi _0`$ which minimizes the effective potential, $`\chi (r\mathrm{})\chi _0`$. The potential energy of the string is therefore concentrated in the core of the string, typically of radial size $`m_\rho `$. The nontrivial homotopy group tells us that no smooth deformation can change the nontrivial behaviour for $`r\mathrm{}`$. In particular, no (singularity free) gauge transformation can ”unwind” the string.

Without the gauge fields, the gradient energy per length of the configuration (61), namely $`E_{grad}𝑑rr^1_\phi \chi _{ijab}^{}_\phi \chi _{ijab}𝑑rr^1\chi ^2(r)`$, would still diverge logarithmically for $`r\mathrm{}`$. We may supplement a gauge field in the $`\phi `$-direction which becomes a pure gauge for $`r\mathrm{}\left(a(r\mathrm{})=1,a(r=0)=0\right)`$

$$A_\phi =\frac{i}{g}_\phi v^Tv^{}a(r)=\frac{1}{\sqrt{3}g}\lambda _8a(r)$$
(64)
It is then easy to see that the covariant derivative vanishes for $`r\mathrm{}`$

$$D_\phi \chi _{ijab}=_\phi \chi _{ijab}ig(A_{ik})_\phi \chi _{kjab}+ig\chi _{ikab}(A_{kj})_\phi 0.$$
(65)
The gauge field strength vanishes as well in this limit. We are therefore sure that the vortex has a finite string tension, the precise value depending on the shape of the functions $`\chi (r)`$ and $`a(r)`$ which have to be determined by solving the field equations with the appropriate boundary values for $`r=0`$ and $`r\mathrm{}`$.

Actually, the topological situation which leads to stable vortices gets somewhat more involved by the fact that both color and flavor groups are broken simultaneously by the octet condensate. A color rotation in the $`Z_3`$ element of $`SU(3)_c`$ can be ”unwound” by a $`\phi `$-dependent color-flavor-locked rotation. This shifts the nontrivial topology from the color sector to the flavor sector, more precisely to the nontrivial center of the diagonal flavor transformations from $`SU(3)_L`$ x $`SU(3)_R`$. The topological stability due to the nontrivial homotopy group $`\pi _1`$ is not affected. Since QCD is invariant only under global flavor transformations the vortex is, however, not invariant under coordinate-dependent color-flavor-locked transformations. The vanishing of the gauge covariant kinetic term for $`r\mathrm{}`$ occurs only if the $`\phi `$-dependent rotation of the vacuum state is associated to the color sector.

In this context it is useful to recall the global structure of the symmetry group of QCD with three massless quarks. For infinitesimal transformations the symmetry group is

$$G=SU(3)_c\text{ x }SU(3)_L\text{ x }SU(3)_R\text{ x }U(1)_B$$
(66)
Global rotations in the center of $`SU(3)_c`$ and the center of the diagonal vectorlike flavor group $`SU(3)_V`$ correspond to identical phase rotations of the quark fields. These transformations belong also to the abelian group $`U(1)_B`$ which is associated to conserved baryon number. A direct consequence of this global group structure is the triality rule: Color representations in the class $`(3,\overline{6}`$, etc.) have baryon number $`B=1/3mod1`$ and electric charge $`Q=2/3mod1`$ whereas the class (1, 8, etc) has $`B=1mod1`$ and $`Q=1mod1`$. This explains why the physical fermions are baryons with $`B=1`$ and integer $`Q`$, since all physical states are color singlets. (Some care is needed for the correct interpretation of the Higgs picture .)

In a first look it may seem that the macroscopic $`Z_3`$-vortices are not present in the confinement picture of QCD, in contradiction to our assumption of equivalence of the Higgs and confinement pictures. This is, however, not obvious. In gluodynamics (QCD without light quarks) the $`Z_N`$-vortices are discussed as important configurations for the understanding of confinement . Lattice simulations could establish the existence of macroscopic vortices in the vacuum of three flavor QCD and their absence in the high temperature phase. Such a finding (or the contrary) may be interpreted as an important test for our picture.

## 13 Conclusion

In conclusion, we have presented here a rather simple picture of the high-temperature phase transition in QCD. Both confinement and chiral symmetry restoration are associated to the melting of a color-octet condensate at the critical temperature. The main phenomenological features of our picture of the phase transition are the following:

(1) For three light quarks with equal mass a first-order phase transition separates a low temperature “hadronic phase” from a high temperature “quark-gluon phase”. In the chiral limit of vanishing current quark masses the quarks and gluons are massless in the high temperature phase where chiral symmetry is restored. Color symmetry becomes a symmetry of the spectrum of pseudoparticles above the critical temperature $`T_c`$. Below $`T_c`$ both chiral symmetry and color symmetry are spontaneously broken. Chiral symmetry breaking generates a mass for the quarks which now appear as baryons. Eight massless Goldstone bosons signal the global symmetry breaking. Local color symmetry breaking gives a mass to the gluons by the Higgs mechanism. The gluons are identified with the octet of vector mesons $`(\rho ,K^{},\omega )`$. The first-order transition is therefore associated with a jump in the vector meson mass (they become massless gluons for $`T>T_c`$) and the baryon mass (they turn to massless quarks for $`T>T_c`$). Our picture of gluon-meson duality and quark-baryon duality allows us to describe the excitations relevant above and below $`T_c`$ by the same fields. The first-order phase transition extends to nonzero current quark mass, including values which lead in the vacuum to a “realistic” average mass for the $`(\pi ,K,\eta )`$-pseudoscalars $`m_{PS}=390\mathrm{MeV}\sqrt{(2M_K^2+M_\pi ^2)/3}`$.

(2) The effective multiquark interactions at low momentum or the corresponding effective potential for $`q\overline{q}`$-bilinears are presumably dominated by the axial anomaly arising from instanton effects. We can then relate the critical temperature of a strong first-order transition to the mass and decay constant of the $`\eta ^{}`$-meson. For $`m_{PS}=390`$ MeV we find $`T_c`$ 170 MeV whereas the critical temperature is lower in the chiral limit. For an anomaly dominated vacuum potential the prediction for the chiral limit $`(m_{PS}=0)`$ is independent of many details and found in the range $`T_c130160`$ MeV.

(3) A dynamical picture for an instanton-induced color octet condensate has been developed recently . This has led to a computation of the octet potential which involves the running gauge coupling as the only free parameter. The characteristic features of the instanton-induced vacuum effective potential are depicted by the potential (A), eq. (4). We concentrate in the following on this estimate. It is encouraging that the predictions of the instanton-induced potential for the critical temperature, namely $`T_c`$ = 170 MeV for $`m_{PS}=`$ 390 MeV and $`T_c`$ = 155 MeV for $`m_{PS}=0`$, agree well with recent lattice simulations . One may interpret this as a test for the idea of spontaneous color symmetry breaking by instanton effects.

(4) For the equation of state in the quark-gluon phase we find at $`T_c`$ a ratio between pressure and energy density $`p/ϵ0.13`$ for $`m_{PS}`$ = 390 MeV and $`p/ϵ0.19`$ for $`m_{PS}=0`$. This ratio approaches very rapidly the equation of state of a relativistic gas $`(p/ϵ=1/3)`$ as $`T`$ increases beyond $`T_c`$.

(5) In the hadronic phase the screening masses of baryons, vector mesons and pseudoscalars show a strong temperature dependence as $`T`$ approaches $`T_c`$ from below. Near $`T_c`$ the chiral symmetry breaking contribution to the average baryon mass $`M_q`$ 600 MeV is only about one half of the vacuum mass and approaches a typical constituent quark mass. Also the Higgs contribution to the $`\rho `$-meson mass is found substantially smaller than in the vacuum, $`\overline{\mu }_\rho (T_c)`$ 300 MeV. For $`T>T_c`$ the effective chiral symmetry breaking fermion mass jumps to a small value $`M_q`$ 40 MeV which is compatible for $`m_{PS}=`$ 390 MeV with common estimates for the average current quark mass $`m_q=\frac{1}{3}(m_s+m_d+m_u)`$. The average pseudoscalar mass is found as $`m_{PS}(T_c)`$ 180 MeV. It is therefore substantially smaller than in the vacuum.

The present paper also contains a rather detailed discussion of a mean field-type computation of the temperature dependence of the effective potential. This has become necessary since a too naive treatment of the scalar fluctuations has previously often led to incorrect results near second-order or weak first-order phase transitions. The reason is the complicated infrared behavior of massless boson fluctuations in thermal equilibrium. A second problem is the non-convexity of the perturbative effective potential which leads naively to negative scalar mass terms. Most previous work has simply left out the scalar fluctuations because of the technical difficulties associated with these problems. Nevertheless, the Goldstone boson fluctuations are important for QCD at low temperature and near the phase transition, and we therefore want to include them. Our prescriptions are based on lessons from earlier more involved renormalization-group investigations and should include the most dominant effects. In particular, they account correctly for the low temperature behavior as described by chiral perturbation theory and are consistent with the physics of a second-order phase transition if this occurs. Our treatment can easily be taken over for other models.

Our approach to the high-temperature phase transition in QCD still contains many uncertainties, which have been discussed at various places in this paper. In particular, a better understanding of the effective potential in the vacuum and a separate treatment of the color octet and singlet condensates would be most welcome and probably needed for a study of finer aspects of the phase transition. This concerns, in particular, the interesting question about the existence and order of a phase transition in “real QCD” with different strange quark and up/down quark masses. An appropriate tool for this purpose seems to be a renormalization group study similar to the succesful treatment  of the phase transition in the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model.

Nevertheless, we find the simple overall picture of the chiral and deconfinement transition rather convincing and the quantitative results of a first rough computation encouraging. We hope that this work can become a starting point for a quantitative analytical understanding of the QCD phase transition.

## Appendix A: Running couplings

In general, the effective masses $`M`$ appearing in the $`J`$-integrals (18) depend on the momentum $`\stackrel{}{q}^2`$. This could be expressed through a momentum dependence of the effective gauge and Yukawa couplings. We want to avoid here the complications of momentum-dependent masses. Instead, the dominant effects of the running couplings are taken into account by the choice of an appropriate renormalization scale $`\mu `$ in eq. (11). Corrections to this approximation are reflected in the term $`\mathrm{\Delta }J_G`$ in eq. (4).

For not too large $`m`$ the integrals (4) are dominated by momenta $`q^2(\pi T)^2`$. We therefore may choose an appropriate temperature-dependent renormalization scale

$$\mu _T=\sqrt{\mu _\rho ^2+\pi ^2T^2},\mu _\rho ^2=g^2(\mu _\rho )\chi ^2$$
(A.1)
(Here $`\mu _\rho ^2=\mu _\rho ^2(\mu =\mu _\rho )`$ refers to the vacuum with arbitrary $`\chi `$ corresponding to a possible presence of “sources” or quark mass terms.) This choice of $`\mu _T`$ is a valid approximation for the fermion fluctuations and we therefore use $`h_\chi ^2(\mu _T)`$ in the argument of $`J_F`$ in eq. (4).

For bosons the issue is more involved due to the infrared behavior of classical statistics. The first two terms in a Taylor expansion, $`J_B(0)`$ and $`J_B/M_{|M^2=0}^2`$, are dominated again by momenta $`\stackrel{}{q}^2(\pi T)^2`$. The remaining integral $`\widehat{J}_B=J_BJ_B(0)M^2\frac{J_B}{M^2}_{|M^2=0}`$ receives, however, an essential contribution from the $`n=0`$ Matsubara frequency which corresponds to classical statistics. The three-dimensional momentum integrals of classcial statistics are more infrared-singular than the four-dimensional integrals for the vacuum. In consequence, the remaining integral $`\widehat{J}_B`$ is dominated by momenta $`\stackrel{}{q}^2M^2`$. This leads in perturbation theory to the so-called cubic term  which has played an important role in the discussion of the electroweak phase transition . Since $`J_B`$ is not analytic at $`M^2=0`$, a careful treatment of the long-distance physics is mandatory if one aims for quantitative precision. For first-order phase transitions the momentum dependence of $`M^2`$ has only moderate effects for the gauge boson fluctuations141414For a second-order phase transition one may split the momentum integral in $`J_B`$ and use $`M^2=g_T^2(\mu _\rho )\chi ^2`$ for $`\stackrel{}{q}^2<(\mu _\rho /2)^2`$. Here $`g_T(\mu _\rho )`$ obeys an effective three-dimensional evolution for $`\mu _\rho <\pi T`$ . and we choose $`M^2=g^2(\mu _T)\chi ^2`$ in $`J_B`$.

For the Goldstone boson fluctuations more care is needed if one wants to be consistent with chiral perturbation theory for low $`T`$ and the correct behavior at a second-order phase transition. We first include the gauge boson and fermion thermal fluctuations. At this level the mass term for the Goldstone bosons is given by

$$M_{G,0}^2=c_G\frac{}{(\chi ^2)}(U_0+\mathrm{\Delta }_gU+\mathrm{\Delta }_qU)$$
(A.2)
In a second step we take the scalar fluctuations into account. Then only the complete mass term $`M_G^2`$ (12) vanishes at the minimum of $`U(\chi ,T)`$. The thermally corrected (pseudo)particle mass term $`M_G^2`$ is relevant for momenta $`\stackrel{}{q}^2\stackrel{<}{}|M_G^2|`$ and we use $`M_G^2`$ for the argument of $`J_G`$. On the other hand, the high momentum part of the integral $`J_G`$ is dominated by momenta where the thermal mass corrections from the scalar fluctuations are not yet important. Therefore $`M_{G,0}^2`$ (A.2) is relevant in this momentum range. We account for this by the correction

$$\mathrm{\Delta }J_G=\frac{T^2}{24}(M_{G,0}^2M_G^2)f_G(M_G^2/T^2)$$
(A.3)
which effectively replaces $`M_G^2`$ by $`M_{G,0}^2`$ for the term $`T^2`$ which is dominated by momenta $`\stackrel{}{q}^2(\pi T)^2`$ if $`T^2>|M_G^2|`$. On the other hand, the factor $`f_G`$ reflects the fact that all temperature fluctuations and therefore also $`\mathrm{\Delta }J_G`$ are exponentially Boltzmann-suppressed for $`T^2M_G^2`$. We choose here a simple form ($`\gamma =0.5`$) which mimicks eq. (21) for large $`m^2`$

$$f_G(m^2)=\mathrm{exp}(\gamma (\gamma ^4+(m^2)^2)^{1/4})(1+\frac{(m^2)^2}{\gamma ^4})^{1/8}$$
(A.4)
These prescriptions may seem somewhat ad hoc and technical. They find a deeper motivation from the study of the renormalization flow in thermal field theories . We will see below that they guarantee agreement with chiral perturbation theory for low temperature and avoid unphysical singularities.

We finally have to specify the scale dependence of the gauge and Yukawa coupling. For the running gauge coupling we employ the perturbative $`\beta `$-function in three-loop order in the $`\overline{MS}`$ scheme

$$\beta _g=\mu \frac{}{\mu }g=\beta _0\frac{g^3}{16\pi ^2}\mathrm{},\beta _0=112N_f/3$$
(A.5)
Our normalization $`g`$(770 MeV)=6 is suggested by the phenomenology of $`\rho `$-decays into pions and $`\mu ^+\mu ^{}`$ . For the Yukawa coupling we use the one-loop renormalization-group equation

$$\frac{dh_\chi ^2}{d\mathrm{ln}\mu }=2\beta _hh_\chi =\frac{a}{16\pi ^2}h_\chi ^4\frac{b}{16\pi ^2}g^2h_\chi ^2$$
(A.6)
Treating also the gauge coupling in one-loop order this has the solution

$$h_\chi (\mu )=h_\chi (\mu _0)\left(\frac{g^2(\mu )}{g^2(\mu _0)}\right)^{\frac{b}{4\beta _0}}\left(1+\frac{ah_\chi ^2(\mu _0)}{(2\beta _0b)g^2(\mu _0)}\left[1\left(\frac{g^2(\mu )}{g^2(\mu _0)}\right)^{\frac{b}{2\beta _0}1}\right]\right)^{1/2}$$
(A.7)
We use the approximation (A.7) with $`b=16`$ such that we recover for small $`h_\chi `$ the standard anomalous dimension for the mass and take somewhat arbitrarily151515A more accurate treatment would keep the color octet and singlet as separate fields. The evolution equations for the two respective Yukawa couplings differ. $`a=1`$. The normalization is fixed by eq. (11), i.e. $`h_\chi `$ (770 MeV)=1.15 GeV$`/\chi _0`$.

## Appendix B: Second-order phase transition

For an investigation of a possible second-order phase transition in the chiral limit we concentrate on the behavior of $`U`$ near $`\chi ^2=0`$ or small values of $`\chi ^2/T^2`$. In the vicinity of the critical temperature of a second-order (or weak first-order) transition the Goldstone fluctuations play a role in this region. The derivative of the temperature-dependent effective potential becomes (in the range where $`U^{}0)`$

$`U^{}(\chi ,T)`$ $`=`$ $`U_0^{}+\left(\widehat{g}^2(\mu _T)+{\displaystyle \frac{N_f}{4}}\widehat{h}_\chi ^2(\mu _T)+{\displaystyle \frac{N_f^21}{24}}c_GU_0^{\prime \prime }\right)T^2`$ (B.1)
$`\left({\displaystyle \frac{3g^3\chi }{1\beta _g/g}}(\mu _\rho )+{\displaystyle \frac{N_f^21}{8}}c_G^{3/2}U^{\prime \prime }\sqrt{U^{}}\right){\displaystyle \frac{T}{\pi }}`$
Here we have improved our treatment of the gauge boson fluctuations by using $`g(\mu _\rho )`$ instead of $`g(\mu _T)`$ for the low momentum fluctuations corresponding to classical statistics (the term $`T`$). Let us denote by $`T_0`$ the temperature where $`U^{}`$ vanishes at $`\chi =0`$, i.e. $`U^{}(0,T_0)=0`$. A second-order phase transition at $`T_c=T_0`$ occurs if $`U^{}(\chi ,T_0)`$ is strictly positive for all $`\chi >0`$. In contrast, one has a first-order transition if $`U^{}(\chi ,T_0)`$ is negative for small $`\chi >0`$. Then the point $`\chi =0`$ corresponds to a maximum of $`U(\chi ,T_0)`$ and the critical temperature for the first-order transition is below $`T_0`$.

Consider first the potential (C) which is relevant for the two-flavor case. Omitting for a moment the Goldstone boson contributions and the running of the gauge coupling $`(\beta _g=0)`$, the term $`g^3\chi T`$ in eq. (B.1) would lead to a first-order transition. This corresponds to the well-known “cubic” term in the effective potential for the Higgs scalar in the electroweak theory. As has been discussed extensively in connection with the electroweak phase transition , the infrared physics of the gauge bosons responsible for this term has to be handled with care. In particular, the running of the gauge coupling is crucial for a correct picture. For a running $`g`$ the product $`g\chi =\mu _\rho `$ goes to a constant $`\mathrm{\Lambda }(T)`$ for $`\chi 0`$ and the nonanalyticity in $`\chi ^2`$ disappears. We note that $`\chi `$-independent terms in eq. (B.1) only influence the location of $`T_0`$. Denoting $`U^{\prime \prime }(0,T_0)=g_\chi `$ one obtains for small $`\chi `$ and $`|TT_0|`$ an expansion, with constants $`c_1,c_2`$ and $`N_f^21=N`$,

$$U^{}=g_\chi \chi ^2+c_1(T^2T_0^2)+c_2(TT_0)\frac{Nc_G^{3/2}}{8\pi }g_\chi T\sqrt{U^{}}$$
(B.2)
For $`TT_0`$ and $`\chi 0`$ this yields

$$U^{}(\rho ,T)=\left[\frac{8\pi }{Nc_G^{3/2}T_0}(\chi ^2+c_3(TT_0))\right]^2$$
(B.3)
and describes 161616A first-order transition is possible if a new minimum appears before the running $`g`$ has reached the behavior $`g\chi =const.`$. a second-order phase transition. The critical exponent $`\nu =1`$ corresponds171717This differs from high-temperature perturbation theory or chiral perturbation theory which would yield a “mean field exponent” $`\nu =1/2`$. to the leading order of the $`1/N`$ expansion in the effective three-dimensional theory . An improvement of the description of the critical behavior (with more realistic critical exponents) needs to incorporate the fluctuations of the neglected scalar modes (see sect. 4) and can be done with the help of modern renormalization group methods . We conclude that a second-order chiral phase transition for $`N_f=2`$ is compatible with our picture, provided the infrared fluctuations of the gauge bosons are treated in the appropriate way.

For three massless flavors the presence of an effective cubic term $`\chi ^3`$ in the effective potential at zero temperature (eq. (5)) changes the situation profoundly. This term reflects the axial anomaly and is induced by instanton effects. The term $`\chi `$ always dominates the r.h.s. of eq. (B.1) for small enough values of $`\chi `$ since there is no competing term linear in $`\chi `$. One infers the existence of a first-order phase transition for three massless flavors.

The vicinity of the critical temperature of a second-order or weak first-order transition is governed by universal behavior. The universality class is characterized by the symmetry and the representations which remain (almost) massless at $`T_c`$. For two-flavor QCD it is not obvious which are the massless scalar representations at a second-order phase transition. Furthermore, the gauge bosons behave essentially as a free gas near the transition. Even though their low momentum classical fluctuations may acquire an effective mass, they will influence the nonuniversal critical behavior. This influence of the gauge bosons is characteristic for a simultaneous chiral and deconfinement transition and leads to modifications of results obtained in quark-meson or Nambu-Jona-Lasinio models . In view of the distance scales probed in lattice simulations, we find it rather unlikely that critical behavior in the standard $`O(4)`$-universality class will show up there. This is independent of the interesting question what would be the true universality calss of a second-order transition in two-flavor QCD, as seen at very large correlation length close to $`T_c`$.

## Acknowledgement

The author thanks M. Alford and J. Berges for stimulating discussions. This work was supported in part by the E.C. contract ERB FMRX-CT97/0122 and by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.