The HotQCD Equation of State

Abstract

We present results from recent calculations of the QCD equation of state by the HotQCD Collaboration and review the implications for hydrodynamic modeling. The equation of state of QCD at zero baryon density was calculated on a lattice of dimensions $32^3 \times 8$ with $m_l = 0.1 m_s$ (corresponding to a pion mass of $\sim$220 MeV) using two improved staggered fermion actions, p4 and asqtad. C alculations were performed along lines of constant physics using more than 100M cpu-hours on BG/L supercomputers at LLNL, NYBlue, and SDSC. We present paramete rizations of the equation of state suitable for input into hydrodynamics models of heavy ion collisions.