Effective-field theory and the nuclear many-body problem

We review many-body calculations of the equation of state of dilute neutron matter in the context of effective-field theories of the nucleon-nucleon interaction.     

Latest results on the hot dense partonic matter at RHIC

At the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) collisions of heavy ions at nucleon-nucleon energies of 200GeV appear to have created a new form of matter thought to be a deconfined state of the partons that ordinarily are bound in nucleons. We discuss the evidence that a thermalized partonic medium, usually called a Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP), has been produced. Then, we discuss the effect of this high-density medium on the production of jets and their pair correlations. Next, we look at direct photons as a clean electro-magnetic probe to constrain the initial hard scatterings. Finally, we review the developing picture for the effect of this medium on the production of open heavy quarks and on the screening by the QGP of heavy-quark bound states.     

Large momenta fluctuations of charm quarks in the Quark-Gluon Plasma<Superscript>⋆</Superscript>

We show that large fluctuations of D-mesons kinetic-energy (or momentum) distributions might be a signature of a phase transition to the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP). In particular, a jump in the variance of the momenta or kinetic energy, as a function of a control parameter (temperature or Fermi energy at finite baryon densities) might be a signature for a first-order phase transition to the QGP. This behavior is completely consistent with the order parameter defined for a system of interacting quarks both at zero temperature (and finite baryon densities) or at finite temperatures which shows a jump in correspondence with a first-order phase transition to the QGP. The J/Ψ displays exactly the same behavior of the order parameter and of the variance of the D-mesons. We discuss implications for relativistic heavy-ion collisions within the framework of a transport model and possible hints for experimental search.     

Low- x QCD physics from RHIC and HERA to the LHC

We present a summary of the physics of gluon saturation and non-linear QCD evolution at small values of the parton momentum fraction x in the proton and nucleus in the context of recent experimental results at HERA and RHIC. The rich physics potential of low-x studies at the LHC, especially in the forward region, is discussed and some benchmark measurements in pp, pA and AA collisions are introduced.     

Influence of chaos on the fusion enhancement by electron screening

We compute by numerical integration of the Dirac equation the number of quark-antiquark pairs produced in the classical color fields of colliding ultrarelativistic nuclei. Results for the dependence of the number of quarks on the strength of the background field, the quark mass and time are presented. We also perform several tests of our numerical method. While the number of qˉ pairs is parametrically suppressed in the coupling constant, we find that in this classical field model it could even be compatible with the thermal ratio to the number of gluons.     

Numerical simulation of non-Abelian particle-field dynamics

Numerical 1D-3V solutions of the Wong-Yang-Mills equations with anisotropic particle momentum distributions are presented. They confirm the existence of plasma instabilities for weak initial fields and of their saturation at a level where the particle motion is affected, similar to Abelian plasmas. The isotropization of the particle momenta by strong random fields is shown explicitly, as well as their nearly exponential distribution up to a typical hard scale, which arises from scattering off field fluctuations. By variation of the lattice spacing we show that the effects described here are independent of the UV field modes near the end of the Brioullin zone.     

Chiral invariant phase space event generator

The Geant4 CHIPS model simulates both decay and nuclear capture of negative muons. In hadron level models the muon is captured by a proton, p(μ,ν_μ)n , and the neutron transfers to the nucleus only 5MeV, which is not enough to split a nucleon from the nucleus, while the measured spectra of emitted nucleons reach 80MeV. In CHIPS, which considers asymptotically free quark-partons, the muon can be captured by a quark, u(μ,ν_μ)d , and transfers 52MeV to the nucleus. This capture mechanism fits the main part of the nucleon spectra, while the high-energy part of the spectra is not fitted. A precise fit of the high-energy part of the nucleon spectra can be made if the muon decay μ → dˉν_μ is taken into account.     

Thermodynamic properties of the SU(2)f chiral quark–loop soliton

We consider a chiral one-loop hedgehog soliton of the bosonized SU(2)_f Nambu & Jona-Lasinio model which is embedded in a hot medium of constituent quarks. Energy and radius of the soliton are determined in self-consistent mean-field approximation. Quasi-classical corrections to the soliton energy are derived by means of the pushing and cranking approaches. The corresponding inertial parameters are evaluated. It is shown that the inertial mass is equivalent to the total internal energy of the soliton. Corrected nucleon and δ isobar masses are calculated in dependence on temperature and density of the medium. As a result of the self-consistently determined internal structure of the soliton the scaling between constituent quark mass, soliton mass and radius is noticeably disturbed. Received: 26 September 1997     

Prompt contributions to the dilepton yield in heavy ion collisions

The mass spectrum is calculated for those dileptons which are produced in the early phase of a heavy ion collisions via the direct production NN → l⁺l⁻X and via the Compton process GN → l⁺l⁻X with prompt gluons radiated in preceding NN interactions. Both mechanisms produce a mass spectrum which decreases steeply with invariant mass of the l⁺l⁻ pair and which is below the CERES data for Pb-Au collisions by about one order of magnitude. Received: 1 December 1999 / Revised version: 18 February 2000     

Neutral color-spin-locking phase in neutron stars

We present results for the spin-1 color-spin-locking (CSL) phase using a NJL-type model in two-flavor quark matter for compact stars applications. The CSL condensate is flavor symmetric and therefore charge and color neutrality can easily be satisfied. We find small energy gaps ≃ 1MeV, which make the CSL matter composition and the EoS not very different from the normal quark matter phase. We keep finite quark masses in our calculations and obtain no gapless modes that could have strong consequences in the late cooling of neutron stars. Finally, we show that the region of the phase diagram relevant for neutron star cores, when asymmetric flavor pairing is suppressed, could be covered by the CSL phase.     

Nucleon sigma term and quark condensate in nuclear matter

We study the bound-nucleon sigma term and the quark condensate in nuclear matter. In the quark-meson coupling (QMC) model the nuclear correction to the sigma term is small and negative, i.e., it decelerates the decrease of the quark condensate in nuclear matter. However, the quark condensate in nuclear matter is controlled primarily by the scalar-isoscalar σ field. Compared to the leading term, it moderates the decrease more than that of the nuclear sigma term alone at densities around and larger than the normal nuclear-matter density.     

Few-nucleon systems (theory)

Three-gluon to three-gluon scatterings lead to rapid thermalization of gluon matter created in central Au-Au collisions at RHIC energies. Thermalization of quark matter is studied from three-quark to three-quark scatterings.     

Fluctuations and correlations in the string clustering approach

The fluctuations due to the clustering of color sources can explain the behaviour of the scaled multiplicity variance and transverse momentum fluctuations with centrality. They also predict a nonmonotonic behaviour with centrality for the multiplicity associated to high-p_T events. The clustering of color sources gives rise to an increase in the long-range correlations with centrality as well as to a supression at high centrality with respect to superposition models.     

Model independent constraints from vacuum and in-medium QCD Sum Rules

We discuss QCD sum rule constraints based on moments of vector meson spectral distributions in the vacuum and in a nuclear medium. Sum rules for the two lowest moments of these spectral distributions do not suffer from uncertainties related to QCD condensates of dimension higher than four. We exemplify these relations for the case of the ω meson and discuss the issue of in-medium mass shifts from this viewpoint. Received: 22 December 1998 / Revised version: 13 January 1999     

Q¯ modes in the Quark-Gluon Plasma

We study the evolution of heavy quarkonium states with temperature in a Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) by evaluating an in-medium Qˉ T-matrix within a reduced Bethe-Salpeter equation in S- and P-wave channels. The interaction kernel is extracted from finite-temperature QCD lattice calculations of the singlet free energy of a Qˉ pair. Quarkonium bound states are found to gradually move across the Qˉ threshold after which they rapidly dissolve in the hot system. We calculate Euclidean-time correlation functions and compare to results from lattice QCD. We also study finite-width effects in the heavy-quark propagators.     

What can we learn from hydrodynamic analysis at RHIC?

We can establish a new picture, the perfect fluid sQGP core and the dissipative hadronic corona, of the space-time evolution of produced matter in relativistic heavy-ion collisions at RHIC. It is also shown that the picture works well also in the forward rapidity region through an analysis based on a new class of the hydro-kinetic model and that this is a manifestation of the rapid increase of the entropy density in the vicinity of QCD critical temperature, namely, deconfinement.     

Molecular dynamics simulation for the baryon-quark phase transition at finite baryon density

We study the baryon-quark phase transition in the molecular dynamics (MD) of the quark degrees of freedom at finite baryon density. The baryon state at low baryon density, and the deconfined quark state at high baryon density are reproduced. We investigate the equations of state of matters with different u-d-s compositions. It is found that the baryon-quark transition is sensitive to the quark width.     

Chiral invariant phase space event generator

The Geant4 quark level CHIPS (CHiral Invariant Phase Space) model simulates nuclear reactions assuming asymptotic freedom of massless quarks uniformly distributed over invariant phase space. Electro-nuclear reactions are simulated generating low-Q² equivalent photons. In this paper generalisation of the model for high Q² is made to describe neutrino-nuclear reactions, where the low-Q² contribution is suppressed by the W -boson mass. The proposed non-perturbative approximation of structure functions fits high-energy lepto-nucleon reactions with high-Q² and neutrino-nucleon reactions starting from the threshold.     

Diffraction at HERA, Color Opacity and Nuclear Shadowing in DIS off nuclei

The QCD factorization theorem for diffractive processes in DIS is used to derive formulae for the leading twist contribution to the nuclear shadowing of parton distributions in the low thickness limit (due to the coherent projectile (photon) interactions with two nucleons). Based on the current analyzes of diffraction at HERA we find that the average strength of the interactions which govern diffraction in the gluon sector at x≤ 10⁻³, Q ₀= 2 GeV is ∼50mb. This is three times larger than in the quark sector and suggests that applicability of DGLAP approximation requires significantly larger Q ₀ in the gluon sector. We use this information on diffraction to estimate the higher order shadowing terms due to the photon interactions with N≥ 3 nucleons which are important for the scattering of heavy nuclei and to calculate nuclear shadowing and Q ² dependence of gluon densities. For the heavy nuclei the amount of the gluon shadowing: G _A(x,Q ₀ ²) /AG _N(x,Q ₀ ²)_{|x ≤ 10−3}∼ 0.25–0.4 is sensitive to the probability of the small size configurations within wave function of the gluon “partonometer” at the Q ₀ scale. At this scale for A∼ 200 the nonperturbative contribution to the gluon density is reduced by a factor of 4–5 at x≤ 10⁻³ unmasking PQCD physics in the gluon distribution of heavy nuclei. We point out that the shadowing of this magnitude would strongly modify the first stage of the heavy ion collisions at the LHC energies, and also would lead to large color opacity effects in eA collisions at HERA energies. In particular, the leading twist contribution to the cross section of the coherent J/ψ production off A≥ 12 nuclei at s ⁻²≥ 70 GeV is strongly reduced as compared to the naive color transparency expectations. The Gribov black body limit for F _2A(x,Q ²) is extended to the case of the gluon distributions in nuclei and shown to be relevant for the HERA kinematics of eA collisions. Properties of the final states are also briefly discussed. Received: 12 March 1999