Eur. Phys. J. C (2011) 71: 1576
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-011-1576-7

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

On the scaling behavior of the chiral phase transition in QCD in finite and infinite volume

¹ Theoretisch-Physikalisches Institut, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, 07743, Jena, Germany
² Physik Department, Technische Universität München, James-Franck-Strasse 1, 85747, Garching, Germany

^* e-mail: j.braun@uni-jena.de

Received: 15 December 2010
Revised: 18 January 2011
Published online: 5 March 2011

Abstract

We study the scaling behavior of the two-flavor chiral phase transition using an effective quark–meson model. We investigate the transition between infinite-volume and finite-volume scaling behavior when the system is placed in a finite box. We can estimate effects that the finite volume and the explicit symmetry breaking by the current quark masses have on the scaling behavior which is observed in full QCD lattice simulations. The model allows us to explore large quark masses as well as the chiral limit in a wide range of volumes, and extract information about the scaling regimes. In particular, we find large scaling deviations for physical pion masses and significant finite-volume effects for pion masses that are used in current lattice simulations.