ANOMALOUS CHIRAL SYMMETRY BREAKING ABOVE THE QCD PHASE TRANSITION

We study the anomalous breaking of U_A(1) symmetry just above the QCD phase transition for zero and two flavors of quarks, using a staggered fermion, lattice discretization. The properties of the QCD phase transition are expected to depend on the degree of U_A(1) symmetry breaking in the transition region. For the physical case of two flavors, we carry out extensive simulations on a 16^3 x 4 lattice, measuring a difference in susceptibilities which is sensitive to U_A(1) symmetry and which avoids many of the staggered fermion discretization difficulties. The results suggest that anomalous effects are at or below the 15% level.