Parity Doubling in QCD Thermodynamics

Motivated by the recent lattice study by FASTSUM collaboration, effective masses of the baryon parity-doublers are shown for various pion masses. A general trend of the nucleon and delta parity-doublers is consistent with the lattice Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) observation, whereas the hyperon masses exhibit a qualitatively different behavior, traced back to the lattice set-up with the heavy pion comparable to the kaon. As an application to hot QCD, we demonstrate the fluctuations and correlations involving baryon number in hot hadronic matter with modified masses of negative-parity baryons, in the context of the hadron resonance gas. Confronting the baryon number susceptibility, baryon–charge and baryon–strangeness correlations as well as their ratios with the lattice QCD data for the physical pion mass, we find that the strong downward mass shift in the hyperons can accidentally reproduce some correlation ratios, however it also tends to overshoot the individual fluctuations and correlations of lattice simulations. Another application of nucleon parity doubling is the physics of neutron stars. Under beta equilibrium and charge neutrality, hadronic matter with unbroken chiral symmetry can be favored in the core of the neutron stars.