Pion and $\eta$-meson mass splitting at the two-flavour chiral crossover

Abstract

We study the splitting in the screening mass of pions and the $\eta$-meson across the chiral crossover. This splitting is determined by the 't Hooft determinant. We use results for the renormalisation group scale dependence of the 't Hooft determinant obtained within the functional renomalisation group in quenched QCD with two flavours. The scale dependence of the 't Hooft determinant is mapped to its temperature dependence with the help of a Polyakov-quark-meson model. As a result we obtain the temperature dependence of the splitting in the screening mass of pions and the $\eta$-meson.