The quark condensate in relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions

Abstract

We compute the modification of the quark condensate $<\bar{q}q>$ in relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions and estimate the 4-volume, where the quark condensate is small ($<\bar{q}q>/<\bar{q}q{>}_0\le$ 0.1--0.3) using hadron phase-space distributions obtained with the quark-gluon string model. As a function of the beam energy the 4-volume rises sharply at a beam energy $E_{lab}/A\simeq$ (2--5) GeV, remains roughly constant up to beam energies $\simeq 20$ GeV and rises at higher energies. At low energies the reduction of the condensate is mainly due to baryons, while at higher energies the rise of the 4-volume is due to the abundant mesons produced. Based on our results we expect that moderate beam energies on the order of 10 GeV per nucleon are favourable for studying the restoration of chiral symmetry in a baryon-rich environment in nucleus-nucleus collisions.

17 pages, 3 EPS figures, uses article.sty, epsfig.sty, to be published in European Physical Journal A

Cited by in corpus (18)

• Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions within 3-Fluid Hydrodynamics: Hadronic Scenario
• Excitation functions of hadronic observables from SIS to RHIC energies
• Sideward flow of K+ mesons in Ru+Ru and Ni+Ni reactions near threshold
• Invariant-Mass Spectroscopy for Condensed Single- and Double-\kbar Nuclear Clusters to be Formed as Residues in Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions
• Hadronic observables from SIS to SPS energies - anything strange with strangeness ?
• Chiral symmetry restoration in heavy-ion collisions at intermediate energies
• Chiral symmetry restoration versus deconfinement in heavy-ion collisions at high baryon density
• Signals of spinodal hadronization: strangeness trapping
• Collective Flow in Heavy-Ion Collisions from AGS to SPS
• Isospin dependence of relative yields of $K^{+}$ and $K^0$ mesons at 1.528 AGeV
• Production of ${\pi }^{+}$ and $K^{+}$ mesons in argon-nucleus interactions at 3.2 AGeV
• Equilibration and baryon densities attainable in relativistic heavy-ion collisions
• Evidence for chiral symmetry restoration in heavy-ion collisions
• Chiral properties of hadron correlators in nuclear matter
• Optimal collision-energy range for realizing macroscopic high-baryon-density matter
• Chiral condensate in nuclear matter with vacuum corrections
• The quest for the quark-gluon plasma from the perspective of dynamical models of relativistic heavy-ion collisions
• Space-time regions of high baryon density and baryon stopping in heavy-ion collisions