QCD thermodynamics with $N_f=2+1$ near the continuum limit at realistic quark masses

Abstract

We report on our study of QCD thermodynamics with 2+1 flavors of dynamical quarks. In this proceeding we present several thermodynamic quantities and our recent calculation of the critical temperature. In order to investigate the thermodynamic properties of QCD near the continuum limit we adopt improved staggered (p4) quarks coupled with tree-level Symanzik improved glue on $N_t=4$ and 6 lattices. The simulations are performed with a physical value of the strange quark mass and light quark masses which are in the range of $m_q/m_s=0.05-0.4$. The lightest quark mass corresponds to a pion mass of about 150 MeV.