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 $T\ge 3T_c$.

arXiv comment13 pages, 17 figures, uses revtex4-1; some typos corrected

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Cited by in corpus (9)

• Melting Hadrons, Boiling Quarks
• Charm Degrees of Freedom in Quark Gluon Plasma
• Examination of the sensitivity of the thermal fits to heavy-ion hadron yield data to the modeling of the eigenvolume interactions
• Surprisingly large uncertainties in temperature extraction from thermal fits to hadron yield data at LHC
• Nuclear and Quark Matter at High Temperature
• Entropy Production During Hadronization of a Quark-Gluon Plasma
• Implementation of Cluster expansion for hot QCD matter
• Quark cluster expansion model for interpreting finite-T lattice QCD thermodynamics
• Charm hadrons above $T_c$