Two-flavor staggered-fermion thermodynamics at $N_t = 12$

Abstract

We present new results in an ongoing study of the nature of the high temperature crossover in QCD with two light fermion flavors. These results are obtained with the conventional staggered fermion action at the smallest lattice spacing to date---approximately 0.1 fm. Of particular interest are a study of the temperature of the crossover, an important indicator of continuum scaling, a determination of the induced baryon charge and baryon susceptibility, used to study the dissolution of hadrons at the crossover, the scalar susceptibility, a signal for the appearance of soft modes, and the chiral order parameter, used to test models of critical behavior.