https://doi.org/10.1140/epjs/s11734-025-02024-w
Regular Article
The QCD scalar susceptibility and thermal scalar resonances in chiral symmetry restoration
Departamento de Física Teórica, Facultad de Ciencias Físicas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid and IPARCOS, Plaza de las Ciencias 1, 28040, Madrid, Spain
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Received:
11
June
2025
Accepted:
11
October
2025
Published online:
27
October
2025
Abstract
Building upon recent results on the role of thermal resonances in chiral symmetry restoration, we show that a description of the QCD scalar susceptibility at finite temperature T saturated by the thermal properties of the lightest scalar resonance, the 
, is compatible both with lattice QCD data at nonzero T and with the 
light resonance properties coming from experimental data. The thermal is generated within the framework of unitarized chiral perturbation theory. This method allows us to achieve a good description of lattice QCD results with a reliable pion mass dependence. In particular, we perform direct fits to the chiral susceptibility measured in lattice data at different pion masses and temperatures, obtaining a remarkable agreement for the susceptibility and for mass differences of the light quark condensate. In addition, the fitted low-energy constants are compatible with phenomenology. Our results confirm the role of unitarized approaches and thermal resonances in the dynamics of the QCD transition.
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© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to EDP Sciences, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2025
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
