Quark number susceptibilities from lattice QCD

Abstract

Results from our recent investigations of quark number susceptibilities in both quenched and 2-flavour QCD are presented as a function of valence quark mass and temperature. A strong reduction (~40%) is seen in the strange quark susceptibility above T_c in both the cases. A comparison of our isospin susceptibility results with the corresponding weak coupling expansion reveals once again the non-perturbative nature of the plasma up to 3T_c. Evidence relating the susceptibility to another non-perturbative phenomena, pionic screening lengths, is presented.