The order of the deconfinement phase transition in a heavy quark mass region

Understand

We study the quark mass dependence of the QCD phase transition by an effective potential defined through the distribution function of observables.

• As a test of the method, we study the first order deconfinement phase transition in the heavy quark mass limit and its fate at lighter quark masses.
• We confirm that the distribution function for the plaquette has two peaks indicating that the phase transition is of first order in the heavy quark limit.
• We then study the quark mass dependence of the distribution function by a reweighting method combined with the hopping parameter expansion.