Abstract
The thermal evolution of the axial anomaly is investigated in the system of the linear sigma model for flavors. We explore the functional form of the effective potential and the coefficient of the ’t Hooft determinant term. It is found that the latter develops a nontrivial structure as a function of the chiral condensate and grows everywhere with respect to the temperature. This shows that mesonic fluctuations strengthen the axial anomaly at finite temperature and it does not vanish at the critical point. The phenomenon has been found to have significance in the thermal properties of the mesonic spectra, especially concerning the system.
- Received 25 April 2016
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.94.036005
© 2016 American Physical Society