Universal critical behavior and the transition temperature in (2+1)-flavor QCD

Abstract: We discuss the universal critical behavior in (2+1)-flavor QCD by analyzing lattice data from improved staggered fermions generated by the HotQCD Collaboration. We present recent results from two different lattice discretizations and various lattice spacings ($N_\tau=6,8,12$) at fixed physical strange quark mass ($m_s$) but varying light quark mass ($m_l$). We find that the chiral order-parameter, i.e. the chiral condensate, shows the expected universal scaling that is associated with the critical point in the chiral limit already for light quark masses $m_l/m_s \lsim 0.05$. From an analysis of the disconnected chiral susceptibility we estimate a preliminary value of the QCD transition temperature.