Topological susceptibility from Nf = 2 + 1 + 1 lattice QCD at nonzero temperature

Abstract

We present results for the topological susceptibility at nonzero temperature obtained from lattice QCD with four dynamical quark flavours. We apply different smoothing methods, including gradient Wilson flow and over-improved cooling, before calculating the susceptibility. It is shown that the considered smoothing techniques basically agree among each other, and that there are simple scaling relations between flow time and the number of cooling/smearing steps. The topological susceptibility exhibits a surprisingly slow decrease at high temperature.