Chiral Aspects of Improved Staggered Fermions with 2+1-Flavors from the HotQCD Collaboration

Abstract

We present recent results from lattice simulations of 2+1 flavors of improved staggered fermions at zero baryon number density near the high temperature crossover. Included are new results from simulations of asqtad fermions at Nt = 12 and a nearly physical Goldstone pion mass and from simulations of HISQ fermions at Nt = 6 and 8. We focus on observables sensitive to chiral symmetry and confinement. A companion HotQCD talk discusses the effects of staggered-fermion taste-symmetry breaking on thermodynamic quantities.

Comments: 7 pages, 6 figures, talk presented at the XXVIII International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory, June 14-19, 2010, Villasimius, Sardinia, Italy