Deconfinement, Monopoles and New Phenomena in Heavy Ion Collisions

Abstract

We discuss various manifestations of the "magnetic scenario" for the quark-gluon plasma viewed as a mixture of two plasmas, of electrically (quark and gluons) as well as magnetically charged quasiparticles. Near the deconfinement phase transition, $T\approx T_c$ very small density of free quarks should lead to negligible screening of electric field while magnetic screening remains strong. The consequence of this should be existence of a "corona" of the QGP, in a way similar to that of the Sun, in which electric fields influence propagation of perturbations and even form metastable flux tubes. The natural tool for its description is (dual) magnetohydrodynamics: among observable consequences is splitting of sound into two modes, with larger and smaller velocity. The latter can be zero, hinting for formation of pressure-stabilized flux tubes. Remarkably, recent experimental discoveries at RHIC show effects similar to expected for "corona structures". In dihadron correlation function with large-$p_t$ trigger there are a "cone" and a "hard ridge",while the so called "soft ridge" is a similar structure seen without hard trigger. They seem to be remnants of flux tubes, which -- contrary to naive expectations -- seem to break less often in near-$T_c$ matter than do confining strings in vacuum.

Written version of talk given at "Shifmania" conference, June 2009, Minneapolis, related to 60-the birthday of Misha Shifman

References in corpus (14)

• Glasma flux tubes and the near side ridge phenomenon at RHIC
• Long Range Correlations and the Soft Ridge in Relativistic Nuclear Collisions
• Intra-jet correlations of high-$p_t$ hadrons from STAR
• On the Origin of the "Ridge" phenomenon induced by Jets in Heavy Ion Collisions
• Magnetic Component of Quark-Gluon Plasma is also a Liquid!
• Magnetic component of Yang-Mills plasma
• Anomalous centrality variation of minijet angular correlations in Au-Au collisions at 62 and 200 GeV from STAR
• Magnetic monopoles in the high temperature phase of Yang-Mills theories
• Electric Flux Tube in Magnetic Plasma
• The role of monopoles in a Gluon Plasma
• The Fate of the Initial State Perturbations in Heavy Ion Collisions
• Static $\bar{Q}Q$ Potentials and the Magnetic Component of QCD Plasma near $T_c$
• Bose-Einstein Condensation of strongly interacting bosons: from liquid ${}^4$He to QCD monopoles
• Anomalous viscosity of an expanding quark-gluon plasma