The theory of confinement and deconfinement is discussed as based on the properties of the QCD vacuum. The latter are described by field correlators of colour-electric and colour-magnetic fields in the vacuum, which can be calculated analytically and on the lattice. As a result one obtains a self-consistent theory of the confined region in the (mu,T) plane with realistic hadron properties. At the boundary of the confining region, the colour-electric confining correlator vanishes, and the remaining correlators describe strong nonperturbative dynamics in the deconfined region with (weakly) bound states. Resulting equation of state for mu=0, p(T), (epsilon-3P)/T are in good agreement with lattice data. Phase transition occurs due to evaporation of a part of the colour-electric gluon condensate, and the resulting critical temperatures T_c(mu) for different n_f are in good correspondence with available data.
Contribution of the quark back reaction to the deconfinement phase transition is studied in the thermodynamical potential of the gluonic sector which consists of the gluon and ghost propagators calculated in the lattice QCD simulations. Starting from QCD thermodynamic potential, we define the gluonic potential in the leading-order of the 2PI formalism, which can describe the deconfinement phase transition. Then the gluonic potential can be written by using the microscopic characters; the gluon and ghost propagators in Landau gauge fixing. To include effects of the quark back reaction, we calcu…
At high temperatures, strongly interacting matter becomes a plasma of deconfined quarks and gluons. In statistical QCD, deconfinement and the properties of the resulting quark-gluon plasma can be investigated by studying the in-medium behaviour of heavy quark bound states. In high energy nuclear interactions, quarkonia probe different aspects of the medium formed in the collision. We survey the results of recent charmonium production studies in SPS and RHIC experiments.
Charge fluctuations studied on event-by-event basis have been recently suggested to provide a signal of the equilibrium quark-gluon plasma produced in heavy-ion collisions at high energies. It is argued that the fluctuations generated at the early collision stage when the energy is released can fake the signal.
We derive a holographic prediction of the deconfinement temperature $T_c$ at vanishing chemical potential within a simplest AdS/QCD model with dynamical dilaton. Our analysis leads to a linear relation between $T_c^4$ and the gluon condensate. After normalizing this relation to the lattice data for $SU(3)$ pure gauge theory, the standard phenomenological value of gluon condensate from QCD sum rules leads to the prediction $T_c=156$ MeV which is in a perfect agreement with the modern lattice results and freeze-out temperature measured by the ALICE Collaboration.
We study the gluonic sector of the three-flavor PNJL model by obtaining the adjoint Polyakov loop and the gluon distribution function in the mean-field approximation. Besides, we explore the thermal strange quark pair-production processes, $q\bar {q} \to s\bar {s}$ and $gg \to s \bar {s}$, with the aid of the three-flavor PNJL model. The results help us identify the temperature where the gluonic contribution to the production rate becomes dominant, which is an innovative phenomenon compared with the result obtained in free perturbation theory.
A comprehensive study of the color singlet heavy quark states above T_c is given, using the Field Correlator Method (FCM) for nonperturbative Q{\bar Q} potentials and the screened Coulomb potential with the T-dependent Debye radius. Using these potentials we calculate binding energies and melting temperatures of heavy mesons and baryons in the deconfined phase of quark-gluon plasma and the J/ψand Upsilon disintegration cross sections via the gluon absorption.
An upper limit to the critical density for the transition to the deconfined phase, at zero temperature, has been evaluated by analyzing the behavior of the gluon condensate in nuclear matter. Due to the non linear baryon density effects, the upper limit to the critical density, ρ_c turns out about nine times the saturation density, rho_0 for the value of the gluon condensate in vacuum <(α_s/π) G^2>=0.012 GeV^4. For neutron matter ρ_c \simeq 8.5 ρ_0. The dependence of the critical density on the value of the gluon condensate in vacuum is studied.
The state of art in studying thermodynamic properties of hot and dense nuclear matter is reviewed with the special emphasis on the confinement-deconfinement transition between hadron matter and quark-gluon plasma. The most popular models used for describing deconfinement are analysed, including statistical bootstrap models, pure phase models, the model of clustered quarks, and the string-flip potential model. Predictions of these models are compared with the lattice numerical simulations. It is concluded that precursor fluctuation effects must be taken into account in order to get a realistic …
In statistical QCD, color deconfinement and the properties of the quark-gluon plasma determine the in-medium behavior of heavy quark bound states. In high energy nuclear collisions, charmonia probe the partonic medium produced in the early stages of the interaction. We survey the present theoretical status and provide a critical evaluation of the charmonium production measurements in experiments at the CERN-SPS and the BNL-RHIC.
In the deconfinement phase of QCD quarks and gluons interact with the dense stochastic colour-magnetic vacuum. We consider the dynamics of quarks in this deconfinement phase using the Field Correlators Method and derive an effective nonperturbative inter-quark potential, in addition to the usual perturbative short-ranged interaction. We find the resulting angular-momentum-dependent interaction to be attractive enough to maintain bound states and, for light quarks (and gluons), to cause emission of quark and gluon pairs. Possible consequences for the strong interacting quark--gluon plasma are b…
The equation of state of SU(3) Yang-Mills theory can be modelled by an effective $Z_3-$symmetric potential $V(\vertϕ\vert,ϕ^3+ϕ^{3*}, T)$ depending on the temperature $T$ and on a scalar field $ϕ$ -- the averaged Polyakov loop. Allowing $ϕ$ to be dynamical opens the way to the study of spatially localized classical configurations of the Polyakov loop. We first show that spherically symmetric static Q-balls exist in the range $(1-1.21)\times T_c$, $T_c$ being the deconfinement temperature. Then we argue that Q-holes solutions, if any are unphysical within our framework. Finally we couple the Po…
We present a simple and intuitive picture for the deconfinement of quarks and gluons at finite temperature: as the temperature increases, QCD behaves like QED at T=0. We show this by calculating the QCD coupling constant as a function of the temperature and of the external momenta used to probe quarks and gluons.
One of the confident predictions of QCD is that at sufficiently high temperature and/or density, hadronic matter should undergo a thermodynamic phase transition to a colour deconfined state of matter - popularly called the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP). In low energy effective theories of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), one usually talks of the chiral transition for which a well defined order parameter exists. We investigate the dissociation of pions and kaons in a medium of hot quark matter decsribed by the Nambu - Jona Lasinio (NJL) model. The decay widths of pion and kaon are found to be large but…
We study a gauge invariant order parameter for deconfinement and the chiral condensate in SU(2) and SU(3) Yang-Mills theory in the vicinity of the deconfinement phase transition using the Landau gauge quark and gluon propagators. We determine the gluon propagator from lattice calculations and the quark propagator from its Dyson-Schwinger equation, using the gluon propagator as input. The critical temperature and a deconfinement order parameter are extracted from the gluon propagator and from the dependency of the quark propagator on the temporal boundary conditions. The chiral transition is de…
We review both lattice evidences and theoretical arguments supporting the existence of electric flux tubes in quark-gluon plasma, above the deconfinement transition temperature $T>T_c$. At the end of this comment, we also point out certain questions which still needs to be answered.
We argue that quite unusual properties of Quark-Gluon Plasma in the RHIC temperature domain $T=(1-2)T_c$ are consequences of the approximate equilibrium between electric and magnetic sectors reached above the deconfinement temperature. Already classical study of few body motion in a electric-magnetic plasma shows abnormally large scattering rate due to the so called ``magnetic bottle'' effect. Molecular dynamics simulation have found that equal mixture of electric and magnetic quasiparticles do produce plasmas of small viscosity and even smaller diffusion rate, comparable to what is needed to …
The Polyakov loop is an order parameter to the confinement-deconfinement phase transition in pure gluodynamics. Recently a simple phenomenological model has been proposed to describe the available lattice data for the renormalized Polyakov loop in the deconfinement phase (hep-ph/0505215). These data exhibit unequivocal inverse power temperature corrections driven by a dimension two gluon condensate. The heavy quark free energy is also studied and compared to lattice data.
A lattice calculation is presented for the electrical conductivity of the QCD plasma with 2+1 dynamical flavours at nonzero temperature. We employ the conserved lattice current on anisotropic lattices using a tadpole-improved clover action and study the behaviour of the conductivity over a wide range of temperatures, both below and above the deconfining transition. The conductivity is extracted from a spectral-function analysis using the Maximal Entropy Method and a discussion of its systematics is provided.
We investigate the chiral and the deconfinement transition within the framework of Dyson-Schwinger equations using quenched lattice data for the temperature dependent gluon propagator as input. We extract corresponding order parameters from the Landau gauge quark propagator with U(1)-valued boundary conditions. We study the chiral transition using the conventional quark condensate, whereas for the deconfinement transition we determine the dual condensate ('dressed Polyakov loop'). In addition we consider an alternative order parameter for deconfinement, the dual scalar quark dressing function.…
We study QCD finite energy sum rules (FESR) for the axial-vector current correlator in the presence of a magnetic field, in the weak field limit and at zero temperature. We find that the perturbative QCD as well as the hadronic contribution to the sum rules get explicit magnetic field-dependent corrections and that these in turn induce a magnetic field dependence on the deconfinement phenomenological parameter s_0 and on the gluon condensate. The leading corrections turn out to be quadratic in the field strength. We find from the dimension d=2 first FESR that the magnetic field dependence of s…
We propose a simple explanation for the connection between chiral symmetry restoration and deconfinement in QCD at high temperature. In the Higgs description of the QCD vacuum both spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking and effective gluon masses are generated by the condensate of a color octet quark-antiquark pair. The transition to the high temperature state proceeds by the melting of this condensate. Quarks and gluons become (approximately) massless at the same critical temperature. For instanton-dominated effective multiquark interactions and three light quarks with equal mass we find a firs…
The historical context of the recent results from high energy heavy ion reactions devoted to the search of quark-gluon plasma (QGP) is reviewed, with emphasis on the surprises encountered. The evidence for QGP from heavy ion reactions is compared with that available from particle reactions.
We evaluate the longitudinal or (chromo-)electric Yang-Mills gluon propagator in the recently proposed center-symmetric Landau gauge at finite temperature [1]. To model the effect of the Gribov copies in the infrared, we use the Curci-Ferrari model which, in turn, allows us to rely on perturbative calculations. At one-loop order in the SU(2) case, the so-obtained longitudinal gluon propagator provides a clear signature for Z2 center-symmetry breaking with a singular behavior, characteristic of a continuous phase transition. This is in sharp contrast with what is found within the standard Landa…
Large scale chromomagnetic, B_3, B_8, and usual magnetic,H, fields have to be generated in QCD after the deconfinement phase transition (DPT) at temperatures T larger than deconfinement temperature T_d. The two former fields are created spontaneously due to asymptotic freedom of gluon intaractions. Whereas H is produced due to either the feature of quarks to possess both electric and color charges or a vacuum polarization in this case. At the polarization, the vacuum quark loops mix the external fields. As a result, B_3, B_8 become the sources generating H. The latter field appears at $T$ much…
In this talk, I review the important role played by plasma instabilities in the thermalization of quark-gluon plasmas at very high energy. [Conference talk presented at Strong and Electroweak Mattter 2004, Helsinki, Finland, June 16--19.]
We discuss the energy loss of energetic parton jets in quark-gluon plasma above the deconfinement temperature $T_c$ by the interaction with scalar and pseudoscalar glueballs. It is shown that the loss by this mechanism is quite important and may play the important role of the observed jet-quenching.
Based on simple physics arguments it is shown that the concept of quark-gluon plasma, a state of matter consisting of uncorrelated quarks, antiquarks, and gluons, has a fundamental problem.
We analyze the known moving boundary effects in plasma and briefly review a mechanism for particle acceleration through a plasma front. We then show how this mechanism may affect particles crossing the boundary of an expanding quark gluon plasma.
QCD predicts that strongly interacting matter will undergo a transition from a state of hadronic constituents to a plasma of unbound quarks and gluons. We first survey the conceptual features of this transition and its description in finite temperature lattice QCD, before we address its experimental investigation through high energy nucleus-nucleus collisions. After considering the conditions achievable in such collisions, we discuss the possible probes to check if the produced medium in its early stages was indeed deconfined. We then elaborate the method that has emerged and the results which…
A quasiclassical theory of the synchrotron-like gluon emission is discussed. We show that the synchrotron emission may be important in the jet quenching if the plasma instabilities generate a chromomagnetic field about $m^{2}_{D}/g$. Our gluon spectrum disagrees with that obtained by Shuryak and Zahed within Schwinger's proper time method.
The size of the average fluctuations of net baryon number and electric charge in a finite volume of hadronic matter differs widely between the confined and deconfined phases. These differences may be exploited as indicators of the formation of a quark-gluon plasma in relativistic heavy-ion collisions, because fluctuations created in the initial state survive until freeze-out due to the rapid expansion of the hot fireball.
An alternate picture of the deconfined phase of gauge theories is described. Instead of a plasma, the theory is viewed as a condensate of Polyakov lines. The pressure is determined by an elementary mean field theory.
A synthesis of Polyakov loop models of the deconfinement transition and quasiparticle models of gluon plasma thermodynamics leads to a class of models in which gluon quasiparticles move in a non-trivial Polyakov loop background. These models are successful candidates for explaining both critical behavior and the equation of state for the SU(3) gauge theory at temperatures above the deconfinement temperature T_c. Polyakov loops effects are most important at intermediate temperatures from T_c up to roughly 2.5 T_c, while quasiparticle mass effects provide the dominant correction to blackbody beh…
I consider the dissociation of a boosted quarkonium in a quark-gluon plasma. This dissociation is due to absorption of a thermal gluon. I discuss the dissociation in terms of the velocity of the quarkonium and the temperature of the quark-gluon plasma. I compare this dissociation rate to the one calculated without including the velocity of the quarkonium.
I consider the behavior of the quark-antiquark potential, called the Cornell Potential, in a quark-gluon plasma. Since mesons are no longer bound in the quark-gluon plasma, there might be a relationship between the string tension of the quark-antiquark potential, the mass of the quark, and the coupling constant.
The frequency dependent conductivity $σ(ω)$ of the strongly coupled Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) is estimated using a bottom up holographic model that can adequately describe recent lattice data for QCD thermodynamics at zero chemical potential. Different choices for the coupling between the bulk gauge field and the other bulk fields that define the background (the metric and a scalar field) are used in order to fit the lattice data for the electric charge susceptibility $χ_2^Q/T^2$. The ratio $σ_{DC}/T$ is found to vary near the deconfinement transition in a way that is similar to recent lattice …
Signatures of dominant and central production of glueballs (binary gluonic mesons) in heavy ion and hadromic collisions are discussed. Search strategies are proposed.
The gluon polarization tensor for the quark-gluon plasma with shear viscosity is derived with the viscous chromohydrodynamics. The longitudinal and transverse dielectric functions are evaluated from the gluon polarization tensor, through which the polarization energy loss suffered by a fast quark traveling through the viscous quark-gluon plasma is investigated. The numerical analysis indicates that shear viscosity significantly reduces the polarization energy loss.
We study the quark energy loss in an expanding quark-gluon plasma. The expanding plasma produced in high energy AA-collision is described by Bjorken's model. The dependence of the energy loss on the infrared cutoff for the radiated gluons, on the quark mass, and on the initial conditions of QCD plasma is investigated.
Here we present a self-consistent quasi-particle model for quark-gluon plasma and apply it to explain the non-ideal behaviour seen in lattice simulations. The basic idea, borrowed from electrodynamic plasma, is that the gluons acquire mass as it propagates through plasma due to collective effects and is approximately equal to the plasma frequency. The statistical mechanics and thermodynamics of such a system is studied by treating it as an ideal gas of massive gluons. Since mass or plasma frequency depends on density, which itself is a thermodynamic quantity, the whole problem need to be solve…
We present new, non-abelian, solutions to the equations of motion which describe the collective excitations of a quark-gluon plasma at high temperature. These solutions correspond to longitudinal and transverse plane-waves propagating through the plasma.
In different approaches, the temperature-baryon density plane of QCD matter is studied for deconfinement and chemical freezeout boundaries. Results from various heavy-ion experiments are compared with the recent lattice simulations, the effective QCD-like Polyakov linear-sigma model, and the equilibrium thermal models. Along the entire freezeout boundary, there is an excellent agreement between the thermal model calculations and the experiments. Also, the thermal model calculations agree well with the estimations deduced from the Polyakov linear-sigma model (PLSM). At low baryonic density or h…
We study the dynamics of first-order cofinement-deconfinement phase transition through nucleation of hadronic bubbles in an expanding quark gluon plasma in the context of heavy ion collisions for interacting quark and hadron gas and by incorporating the effects of curvature energy. We find that the interactions reduce the delay in the phase transition whereas the curvature energy has a mixed behavior. In contrast to the case of early Universe phase transition, here lower values of surface tension increase the supercooling and slow down the hadronization process. Higher values of bag pressure t…
Within the closed-time-path formalism of nonequilibrium QCD, we derive a Slavnov-Taylor (ST) identity for the gluon polarization tensor. The ST identity takes the same form both in Coulomb and covariant gauges. Application to quasi-uniform quark-gluon plasma (QGP) near equilibrium or nonequilibrium quasistationary QGP is made.
I consider the dissociation of the upsilon meson due to absorption of a thermal gluon. I discuss the dissociation rate in terms of the energy density, the number density, and the temperature of the quark-gluon plasma. I compare this to the effect due to screening.
The entropy of the quark-gluon plasma can be calculated from QCD using (approximately) self-consistent approximations. Lattice results for pure gauge theories are accurately reproduced down to temperatures of the order of 2.5$T_c$. Comparisons with other approaches to the thermodynamics of the quark-gluon plasma are briefly discussed.
Strangeness, charmonium and open charm yields in relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions are considered within statistical model approach as potential signals of the quark-gluon plasma.
The small surface tension of the interface between hadronic and quark-gluon-plasma domains, along with a negative curvature tension, implies that the uniform plasma is unstable against spontaneous formation of hadronic bubbles. We furthermore show that spherical bubbles are not stable against small perturbations.
The transverse and longitudinal transport coefficients for jets in a quark-gluon plasma, $\hat{q}$ and $\hat{e}$, are extracted from simulations of the VNI/BMS parton cascade model. We study their variation under the strong coupling and the parton mass in the medium. We show that their ratio is sensitive to the mass of the plasma constituents. Experimental measurements of both quantities could provide new insights into the nature of the quark-gluon plasma as seen by hard probes.
In high temperature SU(2) gluodynamics, in a relativistic background R^{ext.}_xi gauge, the effective color charge (g^2(A_0))_eff. is calculated in the presence of the A_0 condensate which is related to Polyakov's loop and also serves as the order parameter of the deconfinement phase transition at high temperature. The gauge-invariant value of the condensate ((A_0)^cl)_0 is obtained from the two-loop effective potential of order parameter W_L(A_0^cl) which is independent of the gauge-fixing parameter xi and has a nontrivial minimum position. Due to smallness of the expansion parameter ~ g^2/(8…
We calculate photon production from a quark-gluon plasma which is anisotropic in momentum space including the Compton scattering and quark/anti-quark annihilation processes. We show that for a quark-gluon plasma which has an oblate momentum-space anisotropy the photon production rate has an angular dependence which is peaked transverse to the beam line. We propose to use the angular dependence of high-energy medium photon production to experimentally determine the degree of momentum-space isotropy of a quark-gluon plasma produced in relativistic heavy-ion collisions.
We derive hydrodynamic-like equations that are applicable to short-time scale color phenomena in the quark-gluon plasma. The equations are solved in the linear response approximation, and the gluon polarization tensor is derived. As an application, we study the collective modes in a two-stream system and find plasma instabilities when the fluid velocity is larger than the speed of sound in the plasma. The chromo-hydrodynamic approach, discussed here in detail, should be considered as simpler over other approaches and well-designed for numerical studies of the dynamics of an unstable quark-gluo…
We calculate the order α_s finite temperature correction to dilepton production in quark-gluon plasma arising from the two-loop photon self-energy diagrams for high invariant mass M >> T.
It is shown that due to contribution of the hadrons, emitted directly from the inner hot region of central heavy ion collision, radial flow of the final state hadrons is rather sensitive to the creation of quark-gluon plasma with mixed phase.
A calculation of thermal gluon decay shows that this process contributes significantly to strangeness production in a quark-gluon plasma. Our analysis does not support recent claims that this is the dominant process. In our calculations we take into account the resummed form of the transverse and longitudinal parts of the gluon propagator following the Braaten-Pisarski method. Our results are subject to the uncertainty concerning the estimate of the damping rate entering the effective gluon propagator.
In this work, we calculate the binding energies of the $J/ψ$, the $Υ$, and the Toponium in quark-gluon plasma. We also calculate the temperature of the quark-gluon plasma at which these quarkonia dissociate. We approach the problem from a quantum mechanical point of view. We use the variational method and the screening Debye potential in order to obtain these binding energies.
