Decoding the phase structure of QCD via particle production at high energy

By A. Andronic, P. Braun-Munzinger, K. Redlich, J. Stachel. Nature, 2017

788 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Recent studies based on lattice Monte Carlo simulations of quantum chromodynamics (QCD)—the theory of strong interactions—have demonstrated that at high temperature there is a phase change from confined hadronic matter to a deconfined quark–gluon plasma in which quarks and gluons can travel distances that greatly exceed the size of hadrons. Here we show that the phase structure of such strongly interacting matter can be decoded by analysing particle production in high-energy nuclear collisions within the framework of statistical hadronization, which accounts for the thermal distribution of particle species. Our results represent a phenomenological determination of the location of the phase boundary of strongly interacting matter, and imply quark–hadron duality at this boundary. By analysing particle production in high-energy nuclear collisions, the phase boundary of strongly interacting matter is located and the phase structure of quantum chromodynamics is elucidated, implying quark–hadron duality.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Materials Chemistry, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a938ef5338fae70dd9e66b6b5019f2b01c7a2c63

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. V. Koch
2. S. Esumi
3. A. Bzdak
4. N. Xu
5. J. Liao
6. Alexander Rothkopf
7. M. Stephanov

In Materials Chemistry

1. N. Xu
2. E. Laermann
3. Alexander Rothkopf

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. Alexander Rothkopf
2. N. Xu
3. V. Koch
4. J. Liao
5. A. Bzdak
6. S. Esumi
7. O. Kaczmarek
8. P. Petreczky

Citations in the corpus

• Heavy quarkonium in extreme conditions (2019, methodology): “[325] as well as the computations of Ref.”
• The nonperturbative functional renormalization group and its applications (2020, neutral): “Freeze-out data: [985–990].”
• Mapping the phases of quantum chromodynamics with beam energy scan (2019, background): “These early initiatives have meanwhile led to very active and large research programs at the Bevatron of LBL, the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron (AGS) and the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) of Brookhaven as well as the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) of C”
• Chiral crossover in QCD at zero and non-zero chemical potentials (2018, background): “Also, shown are the chemical freeze-out parameters extracted from grand canonical ensemble based fits to hadron yields within 0-10% centrality class for the ALICE [5] experiment and 0-5% centrality class for the STAR [34] experiment.”
• Multiplicity dependence of light-flavor hadron production in pp collisions at √s = 7 TeV (2019, methodology): “Traditionally, bulk particle production in heavy-ion collisions is described on the basis of equilibrium many-body theories such as hydro- and thermodynamics (see for instance [10, 11] and references therein).”