Topology in the SU(N_f) chiral symmetry restored phase of unquenched QCD and axion cosmology

Departamento de Física Teórica, Facultad de Ciencias Universidad de Zaragoza, Pedro Cerbuna 9, 50009 Zaragoza, Spain

^** e-mail: azcoiti@azcoiti.unizar.es

Published online: 26 March 2018

Abstract

The axion is one of the more interesting candidates to make the dark matter of the universe, and the axion potential plays a fundamental role in the determination of the dynamics of the axion field. Moreover, the way in which the U(1)_A anomaly manifests itself in the chiral symmetry restored phase of QCD at high temperature could be tested when probing the QCD phase transition in relativistic heavy ion collisions. With these motivations, we investigate the physical consequences of the survival of the effects of the U(1)_A anomaly in the chiral symmetric phase of QCD, and show that the free energy density is a singular function of the quark mass m, in the chiral limit, and that the σ and π susceptibilities diverge in this limit at any T ≥ T_c. We also show that the difference between the π and δ susceptibilities diverges in the chiral limit at any T ≥ T_c, a result that can be contrasted with the existing lattice calculations; and discuss on the generalization of these results to the N_f ≥ 3 model.