We analyze the pseudocritical behavior of three-flavor QCD using highly improved staggered quarks on lattices with temporal extent Nτ=8 and for quark masses corresponding to a pseudoscalar Goldstone mass in the range 80MeV≲mπ≲140MeV. Our findings are consistent with the occurrence of a second order chiral phase transition at vanishing values of the quark masses. The chiral phase transition temperature at this finite value of the lattice spacing is determined to be Tc=98−6+3MeV. A comparison with a corresponding analysis performed in (2+1)-flavor QCD suggests that the continuum limit extrapolated chiral phase transition temperature in three-flavor QCD will turn out to be below 90 MeV.

• Received 26 November 2021
• Accepted 3 February 2022

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.105.034510

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Published by the American Physical Society