Chiral phase transition in three-flavor QCD from lattice QCD

We analyze the pseudocritical behavior of three-flavor QCD using highly improved staggered quarks on lattices with temporal extent N_τ=8 and for quark masses corresponding to a pseudoscalar Goldstone mass in the range 80 MeV ≲m_π≲140 MeV . 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 T_c=98_-6⁺³ MeV . 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.