Senior Thesis

Order of the Chiral Phase Transition in the Absence of the Anomaly

Abhijit Mehta

April 3, 2006

Thesis Committee: Shailesh Chandrasekharan, Berndt Mueller, Ronen Plesser and Calvin Howell (exofficio non-voting member)

ABSTRACT:

We construct a Monte Carlo algorithm to study a lattice field theory model that has the same symmetries as massless, two-flavor QCD without the anomaly. We use this to investigate if the of the chiral phase transition in the absence of the anomaly in two flavor QCD can be second order. Thus far, we have not found evidence of a second order transition.

Here is the thesis in PDF: Mehta_thesis.pdf (about 0.27 MBytes)