The speed of sound and specific heat in the QCD plasma: hydrodynamics, fluctuations and conformal symmetry

Abstract

We report the continuum limits of the speed of sound, c_s, and the specific heat at constant volume, c_v, in quenched QCD at temperatures of 2Tc and 3Tc. At these temperatures, c_s is within 2-sigma of the ideal gas value, whereas c_v differs significantly from the ideal gas. However, both are compatible with results expected in a theory with conformal symmetry. We investigate effective measures of conformal symmetry in the high temperature phase of QCD.

Table II has been changed to show the contrubutions of the terms containing covariances clearly. Typos corrected