Chiral phase transition of $N_f$=2+1 QCD with the HISQ action

Understand

We present studies of universal properties of the chiral phase transition in $N_f$=2+1 QCD based on the simulations using Highly Improved Staggered fermions on lattices with temporal extent $N_\tau$=6.

• We analyze the quark mass and volume dependence of the chiral condensates and chiral susceptibilities in QCD with two degenerate light quarks and a strange quark.
• The strange quark mass is chosen to be fixed to its physical value ($m^{phy}_s$) and five values of light quark masses ($m_l$) that are varied in the interval 1/20$\gtrsim m_l/m^{phy}_s \gtrsim$1/80.
• Here various quark masses correspond to pseudo Goldstone pion masses ranging from about 160 MeV to about 80 MeV.