The running coupling of 8 flavors and 3 colors
A bstractWe compute the renormalized running coupling of SU(3) gauge theory coupled to Nf = 8 flavors of massless fundamental Dirac fermions. The recently proposed finite volume gradient flow scheme is used. The calculations are performed at several lattice spacings allowing for a controlled continuum extrapolation. The results for the discrete β-function show that it is monotonic without any sign of a fixed point in the range of couplings we cover. As a cross check the continuum results are compared with the well-known perturbative continuum β-function for small values of the renormalized coupling and perfect agreement is found.

title: Baryon spectrum in the composite sextet model
abstract: The strongly coupled near-conformal gauge theory with two fermion flavors in the two-index symmetric (sextet) representation of SU(3) is potentially a minimal realization of the composite Higgs mechanism. We discuss the staggered fermion construction of baryonic states, present our first numerical results and comment on implications for dark matter.

title: The ﬁnite volume spectrum of excited states from lattice QCD simulations
abstract: We present results for the spectrum of excited mesons obtained from temporal correlations of spatially-extended single-hadron and multi-hadron operators computed in lattice QCD. The stochastic LapH algorithm is implemented on anisotropic, dynamical lattices for isovectors for pions of mass 390 MeV. A large correlation matrix with single-particle and two-particle probe operators is diagonalized to identify resonances. The masses of excited states in the I = 1,S = 0,T 1u channel as well as the mixing of single and multi-particle probe operators are presented.

title: Pion-pion scattering phase shifts with the stochastic LapH method
abstract: Progress in calculating scattering phase shifts on $N_f=2+1$ anisotropic clover Wilson lattices is described. The stochastic LapH method facilitates computations in large volumes and for light pion masses. Results for pion masses down to 240 MeV, keeping $m_\pi L > 4$, are presented.

title: Twelve fundamental and two sextet fermion flavors
abstract: We report extended simulation results and their new analysis in two important gauge theories with twelve fermion flavors in the fundamental SU(3) color representation and two fermions in the sextet representation. We probe the $N_f=12$ model with respect to the conformal window using mass deformed finite size scaling (FSS) theory driven by the fermion mass anomalous dimension. Our results at fixed gauge coupling show problems with the conformal scenario of the $N_f=12$ model. In the sextet model with two flavors, under the conformal hypothesis, we determine large values for the anomalous fermion mass dimension with $\gamma\geq 1$. Since our sextet analysis favors the chiral symmetry breaking hypothesis without conformality, the large exponent $\gamma$ could play an important role in understanding the composite Higgs mechanism. The new results discussed here include our extended data sets and exceed what was presented at the conference.

title: Can the nearly conformal sextet gauge model hide the Higgs impostor
abstract: New results are reported from large scale lattice simulations of a frequently discussed strongly interacting gauge theory with a fermion flavor doublet in the two-index symmetric (sextet) representation of the SU(3) color gauge group. We find that the chiral condensate and the mass spectrum of the sextet model are consistent with chiral symmetry breaking in the limit of vanishing fermion mass. In contrast, sextet fermion mass deformations of spectral properties are not consistent with leading conformal scaling behavior near the critical surface of a conformal theory. A recent paper could not resolve the conformal fixed point of the gauge coupling from the slowly walking scenario of a very small nearly vanishing β -function (DeGrand et al.  ). It is argued that overall consistency with our new results is resolved if the sextet model is close to the conformal window, staying outside with a very small non-vanishing β -function. The model would exhibit then the simplest composite Higgs mechanism leaving open the possibility of a light scalar state with quantum numbers of the Higgs impostor. It would emerge as the pseudo-Goldstone dilaton state from spontaneous symmetry breaking of scale invariance. We will argue that even without association with the dilaton, the scalar Higgs-like state can be light very close to the conformal window. A new Higgs project of sextet lattice simulations is outlined to resolve these important questions.

title: Foundation of Hydrodynamics for Systems with Strong Interactions
abstract: For a dense and strongly interacting system, such as a nucleus or a strongly-coupled quark-gluon plasma, the foundation of hydrodynamics can be better found in the quantum description of constituents moving in the strong mean fields generated by all other particles. Using the result that the Schroedinger equation and the Klein-Gordon equation can be written in hydrodynamical forms, we find that the probability currents of the many-body system in the mean-field description obey a hydrodynamical equation with stress tensors arising from many contributions: quantum effects, mean-field interactions, and thermal fluctuations. The influence of various contributions to the hydrodynamical motion is expected to vary with the temperature, as the quantum and mean-field stress tensors playing more important roles at low and moderate temperatures.

title: Anomalous soft photons in hadron production
abstract: Anomalous soft photons in excess of what is expected from electromagnetic bremsstrahlung have been observed in association with the production of hadrons, mostly mesons, in high-energy ${K}^{+}p$, ${\ensuremath{\pi}}^{+}p$, ${\ensuremath{\pi}}^{\ensuremath{-}}p$, $\mathit{pp}$, and ${e}^{+}{e}^{\ensuremath{-}}$ collisions. We propose a model for the simultaneous production of anomalous soft photons and mesons in quantum field theory, in which the meson production arises from the oscillation of color charge densities of the quarks of the underlying vacuum in the flux tube. Because a quark carries both a color charge and an electric charge, the oscillation of the color charge densities will be accompanied by the oscillation of electric charge densities, which will in turn lead to the simultaneous production of soft photons during the meson production process. How the production of these soft photons may explain the anomalous soft photon data is discussed. Further experimental measurements to test the model are proposed.

title: Potential Models and Lattice Gauge Current-Current Correlators
abstract: We compare current-current correlators in lattice gauge calculations with correlators in different potential models for a pseudoscalar charmonium in the quark-gluon plasma. An important ingredient in the evaluation of the current-current correlator in the potential model is the basic principle that, out of the set of continuum states, only resonance states and Gamow states with lifetimes of sufficient magnitudes can propagate as composite objects and can contribute to the current-current correlator. When the contributions from the bound states and continuum states are properly treated, the potential model current-current correlators obtained with the potential proposed by Wong [ (2005)] are consistent with the lattice gauge correlators. The proposed potential model thus gains support to be a useful tool to complement lattice gauge calculations for the study of QQ{bar} states at high temperatures.

title: Effects of dynamical quarks on the stability of heavy quarkonia in quark-gluon plasma
abstract: To study the stability of heavy quarkonia in quark-gluon plasma, we use a color-singlet Q-Qbar potential determined previously to be a well-defined linear combination of the free energy F_1 and the internal energy U_1. Using the lattice gauge results of Kaczmarek et al., the dissociation temperatures of J/psi and chi_b in quenched QCD are found to be 1.62Tc and 1.18Tc respectively, in good agreement with spectral function analyses. The dissociation temperature of J/psi in full QCD with 2 flavors is 1.42Tc. Thus, the presence of dynamical quarks in full QCD lowers the dissociation temperature of J/psi, but J/psi remains bound up to 1.42Tc.

title: Tests of two-body Dirac equation wave functions in the decays of quarkonium and positronium into two photons
abstract: Two-body Dirac equations of constraint dynamics provide a covariant framework to investigate the problem of highly relativistic quarks in meson bound states. This formalism eliminates automatically the problems of relative time and energy, leading to a covariant three dimensional formalism with the same number of degrees of freedom as appears in the corresponding nonrelativistic problem. It provides bound state wave equations with the simplicity of the nonrelativistic Schr\"odinger equation. Here we begin important tests of the relativistic 16 component wave function solutions obtained in a recent work on meson spectroscopy, extending a method developed previously for positronium decay into two photons. Preliminary to this we examine the positronium decay in the $^{3}P_{0,2}$ states as well as the $^{1}S_{0}$. The two-gamma quarkonium decays that we investigate are for the ${\ensuremath{\eta}}_{c}$, ${\ensuremath{\eta}}_{c}^{\ensuremath{'}}$, ${\ensuremath{\chi}}_{c0}$, ${\ensuremath{\chi}}_{c2}$, ${\ensuremath{\pi}}^{0}$, ${\ensuremath{\pi}}_{2}$, ${a}_{2}$, and ${f}_{2}^{\ensuremath{'}}$ mesons. Our results for the four charmonium states compare well with those from other quark models and show the particular importance of including all components of the wave function as well as strong and c.m. energy dependent potential effects on the norm and amplitude. The results for the ${\ensuremath{\pi}}^{0}$, although off the experimental rate by 13%, are much closer than the usual expectations from a potential model. We conclude that the two-body Dirac equations lead to wave functions which provide good descriptions of the two-gamma decay amplitude and can be used with some confidence for other purposes.