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