We describe a series of simulations of high temperature QCD with two flavors of Wilson quarks aimed at clarifying the nature of the high temperature phase found in current simulations. Most of our work is with four time slices, although we include some runs with six and eight time slices for comparison. In addition to the usual thermodynamic observables, we study the quark mass defined by the divergence of the axial vector current and the quark propagator in the Landau gauge. We find that the sharpness of the $N_t=4\mathrm{}$ thermal transition has a maximum around $\kappa =0.19\mathrm{}$ and $\frac{6}{g^2}=4.8\mathrm{}$.

• Received 27 October 1993

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.49.3574