Deconfinement phase transition in QCD with heavy quarks

Abstract

Using the pseudo-fermion method to simulate QCD with dynamical quarks we investigate the effects of heavy dynamical quarks of 2 flavours on the deconfinement phase transition in the quenched QCD. As the mass of the quark is decreased the phase transition weakens as expected. Compared to the earlier results with leading order hopping parameter expansion, however, the weakening is less rapid. Our estimated upper bound on the critical mass where the transition becomes continuous is 1.5-2 times lower than earlier results.