QCD over $T_c$: hadrons, partons and continuum

Abstract

In this paper we provide a physical picture for the QCD phase transition in terms of qualitative changes in the spectral functions. Our approach takes into account the crossover nature of this transition and counts for the observed strong correlation seen in higher order susceptibilities. We demonstrate that the hadron resonance gas, which alone describes the thermodynamics at temperatures $T<T_c$, will appreciably contribute to the total pressure until $T\le 3T_c$. In this intermediate regime the QCD matter consists of strongly correlated excitations, interpretable as either hadrons or partons. As hadronic spectral peaks gradually vanish, the partonic excitations start to form a stand-alone quasiparticle gas. The conventional picture of a quark gluon plasma emerges only at $T\ge 3T_c$.

13 pages, 17 figures, uses revtex4-1; some typos corrected

References in corpus (7)

• The order of the quantum chromodynamics transition predicted by the standard model of particle physics
• The QCD equation of state with dynamical quarks
• Quarkonium correlators and spectral functions at zero and finite temperature
• Dynamical quasiparticles properties and effective interactions in the sQGP
• Entropy of expanding QCD matter
• Modified Bag Models for the Quark Gluon Plasma Equation of State
• Equation of state for distributed mass quark matter

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Quark cluster expansion model for interpreting finite-T lattice QCD thermodynamics