Deconfinement transition: a three dimensional model

We present a three–dimensional model for quark matter with a density dependent quark–quark (confining) potential, which allows to describe a sort of deconfinement transition as the system evolves from a low density assembly of bound structures to a high density free Fermi gas of quarks. We consider different confining potentials, some of which successfully utilized in hadron spectroscopy. We find that a proper treatment of the many–body correlations induced by the medium is essential to disentangle the different nature of the two (hadronic and deconfined) phases of the system. For this purpose the ground state energy per particle and the pair correlation function are investigated. Received: 10 June 1998 / Revised version: 24 September 1998