Finite temperature properties of QCD with two flavors and three, four, and five colors

Abstract

I present a numerical study of the crossover between the low temperature chirally broken phase and the high temperature chirally restored phase in $SU({N}_{c})$ gauge theory with ${N}_{c}=3--5$ colors and ${N}_{f}=2$ degenerate fermion flavors. Fermion masses span a range of intermediate values corresponding to pseudoscalar to vector meson masses $({m}_{PS}/{m}_{V}{)}^{2}\ensuremath{\sim}0.25--0.63$. Observables include the temperature-dependent chiral condensate and screening masses. At each fermion mass these quantities show nearly identical temperature dependence across ${N}_{c}$.

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