Renormalization Group Flow and Equation of State of Quarks and Mesons
Abstract
Nonperturbative flow equations within an effective linear sigma model coupled to constituent quarks for two quark flavors are derived and solved. A heat kernel regularization is employed for a renormalization group improved effective potential. We determine the initial values of the coupling constants in the effective potential at zero temperature. Solving the evolution equations with the same initial values at finite temperature in the chiral limit, we find a second order phase transition at Tc ≈ 150 MeV. Due to the smooth decoupling of massive modes, we can directly link the low-temperature four-dimensional theory to the three-dimensional high-temperature theory. We calculate the equation of state in the chiral limit and for finite pion masses and determine universal critical exponents.
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