Axion oscillations and the quark-hadron phase transition

We consider the possibility that the quark-hadron phase transition occurs when the axion field passes through the minimum of its potential during its oscillation cycle. If this were to occur, the axion field would gain no energy from the associated increase in mass thus permitting the cosmological bound on the axion decay constant to be raised. However, we find that the probability of this happening is small.     

Hybrid stars and quark hadron phase transition in chiral colour dielectric model

We investigate the properties of hybrid stars consisting of quark matter in the core and hadron matter in outer region. The hadronic equation of state (EOS) is calculated by using nonlinear Walecka model. Strange baryons are included in the hadronic EOS calculation. The chiral colour dielectric (CCD) model, in which quarks are confined dynamically, is used to calculate quark matter EOS. We find that the phase transition from hadron to quark matter is possible in a narrow range of the parameters of nonlinear Walecka and CCD models. The transition is strong or weak first order depending on the parameters used. The EOS thus obtained, is used to study the properties of hybrid stars. We find that the calculated hybrid star properties are similar to those of pure neutron stars.     

Bubble collisions in the cosmological quark-hadron phase transition

Assuming that a first-order QCD phase transition occured in the very early universe, we investigate the growth and collisions of hadron bubbles in the thin-wall approximation. We also discuss a mechanism of baryon number concentration.     

Quark core stars,quark stars and strange stars

A recent one flavor (zero temperature) quark matter equation of state is generalized to several flavors. It is shown that quarks undergo a first order phase transition. In addition, this equation of state depends on few parameters, one in the two flavor case, two in the three flavor case, and these parameters can be constrained by phenomenology. This equation of state is then applied to 1) the hadronquark transition in neutron stars and the determination of quark star stability, 2) the investigation of strange matter stability and possible strange star existence.     

Cosmological quark-hadron phase transition and formation of isothermal density fluctuations

The dynamical process of the cosmological quark-hadron phase transition is investigated under the assumption of a weakly first-order phase transition. In particular the characteristic mass of these nuggets is determined to be smaller than 10¹⁹ g, using a spatial correlation function of the trapped quark phase. Furthermore, the possibility of these nuggets being left as isothermal baryonic clouds with very high density (δϱ_b/ϱ_b ∼ 5.0×10¹²) after evaporation is pointed out, and its cosmological implications are discussed.     

Effect of colour singletness of quark-gluon plasma in quark-hadron phase transition

Consequences of the constraint of SU(3) colour singletness of quark-gluon plasma are studied. This restriction increases the free energy barrier for the formation of hadronic bubble in supercooled phase and influences significantly the dynamics of the initial stage of quark-hadron phase transition. It also introduces terms dependent on the volume occupied by the plasma in the energy density and the pressure. These modifactions vanish in the limit of an infinite volume. The last stage of the hadronization of the QGP likely to be formed in relativistic heavy ion collisions is necessarily characterized by a decreasing volume containing the quark matter, and thus these corrections become important. The nucleation of plasma droplets at AGS energies is also seen to be strongly affected by the requirement of colour singletness, and the choice of prefactor. Received: 4 December 1997 / Published online: 15 May 1998     

Mott effect and J/\psi dissociation at the quark-hadron phase transition

We investigate the in-medium modification of pseudoscalar and vector mesons in a QCD-motivated chiral quark model by solving the Dyson-Schwinger equations for quarks and mesons at finite temperature for a wide mass range of meson masses, from light ( , ) to open-charm (D, D ^*) states. At the chiral/deconfinement phase transition, the quark-antiquark bound states enter the continuum of unbound states and become broad resonances (hadronic Mott effect). We calculate the in-medium cross-sections for charmonium dissociation due to collisions with light hadrons in a chiral Lagrangian approach, and show that the D- and D ^*-meson spectral broadening lowers the threshold for charmonium dissociation by - and -mesons. This leads to a step-like enhancement in the reaction rate. We suggest that this mechanism for enhanced charmonium dissociation may be the physical mechanism underlying the anomalous suppression observed by NA50.Received: 30 September 2002, Published online: 22 October 2003PACS: 05.20.Dd Kinetic theory - 12.38.Mh Quark-gluon plasma - 14.40.-n Mesons - 25.75.Nq Quark deconfinement, quark-gluon plasma production, and phase transitions     

Hadron-quark phase transition in dense stars

An equation of state is computed for a plasma of one flavour quarks interacting through some phenomenological potential, at zero temperature. Assuming that the confining potential is scalar and colour-independent, it is shown that the quarks undergo a first-order mass phase transition. In addition, due to the way screening is introduced, all the thermodynamic quantities computed are independent of the actual shape of the interquark potential. This equation of state is then generalized to a several quark flavour plasma and applied to the study of the hadron-quark phase transition inside a neutron star.     

Hadron-quark phase transition in neutron stars

We study the hadron-quark phase transition in the interior of neutron stars. The relativistic mean field (RMF) theory is adopted to describe the hadronic matter phase, while the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model is used for the quark matter phase. We investigate the influence of the hadronic equation of state on the phase transition and neutron star properties. It is found that a neutron star possesses a large population of hyperons, but it is not dense enough to possess a pure quark core. Whether or not the mixed phase of hadronic and quark matter appears in the center of neutron stars depends on the RMF parameters used in the calculation.