Thermodynamics of lattice QCD with 2 sextet quarks on N_t=8 lattices

Understand

We continue our lattice simulations of QCD with 2 flavours of colour-sextet quarks as a model for conformal or walking technicolor.

• A 2-loop perturbative calculation of the $\beta$-function which describes the evolution of this theory's running coupling constant predicts that it has a second zero at a finite coupling.
• This non-trivial zero would be an infrared stable fixed point, in which case the theory with massless quarks would be a conformal field theory.
• However, if the interaction between quarks and antiquarks becomes strong enough that a chiral condensate forms before this IR fixed point is reached, the theory is QCD-like with spontaneously broken chiral symmetry and confinement.