Paper detail

New results with colour-sextet quarks

We study QCD with 2 and 3 flavours of colour-sextet quarks. The 2-flavour theory is a candidate Walking Technicolor theory. Since we are attempting to distinguish whether this theory is walking or conformal, we also study the 3-flavour theory, which is believed to be conformal, for comparison. We simulate lattice QCD with 2 and 3 flavours of colour-sextet staggered quarks at finite temperatures to determine the scales of confinement and chiral-symmetry breaking from the positions of the deconfinement and chiral-symmetry restoration transitions. Unlike the case with fundamental quarks, these transitions are far apart. For 2 flavours the values of beta=6/g^2 for both transitions increase as Ta is decreased from 1/4 to 1/6 to 1/8, as expected for a theory whose coupling runs to smaller values as the lattice spacing is decreased. However, for the chiral transition, the increase in beta between Ta=1/4 and Ta=1/6 is much larger than the increase between Ta=1/6 and Ta=1/8. This suggests that between Ta=1/4 and Ta=1/6 we are at strong coupling where the theory is effectively quenched, while between Ta=1/6 and Ta=1/8 we are emerging into the weak coupling regime. It will require even smaller Ta values to determine whether the running of the chiral-transition coupling is controlled by asymptotic freedom and the theory walks, or if it reaches a non-zero limit when the transition becomes a bulk transition and the theory is conformal. The 3 flavour case at Ta=1/4 and Ta=1/6 behaves similarly to the 2 flavour case. Since this theory is expected to be conformal, the interpretation that we are seeing strong-coupling behaviour, inaccessible from the weak-coupling limit (continuum) is the most likely interpretation.