U(1) Axial Symmetry and Correlation Functions in the High Temperature Phase of QCD

Abstract

Simple group-theoretical arguments are used to demonstrated that in the high temperature (chirally restored) phase of QCD with N massless flavours, all n-point correlation functions of quark bilinears are invariant under U(1) axial transformations provided n < N. In particular this implies that the two-point correlation function in the eta' channel is identical to that in the pion channel for N > 2. Unlike previous work, this result does not depend on the topological properties of QCD and can be formulated without explicit reference to functional integrals.