No Arabic abstract
The modification of mesonic observables in a hot medium is analyzed as a tool to investigate the restoration of chiral and axial symmetries in the context of the Polyakov-loop extended Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model. The results of the extended model lead to the conclusion that the effects of the Polyakov loop are fundamental for reproducing lattice findings. In particular, the partial restoration of the chiral symmetry is faster in the PNJL model than in the NJL one, and it is responsible for several effects: the meson-quark coupling constants show a remarkable difference in both models, there is a faster tendency to recover the Okubo-Zweig-Iizuka rule, and finally the topological susceptibility nicely reproduces the lattice results around $T/T_capprox 1.0$.
We explore the phase diagram and the modification of mesonic observables in a hot and dense medium using the (2+1) Polyakov-Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model. We present the phase diagram in the ($T,,mu_B$)-plane, with its isentropic trajectories, paying special attention to the chiral critical end point (CEP). Chiral and deconfinement transitions are examined. The modifications of mesonic observables in the medium are explored as a tool to analyze the effective restoration of chiral symmetry for different regions of the phase diagram. It is shown that the meson masses, namely that of the kaons, change abruptly near the CEP, which can be relevant for its experimental search.
The behavior of strange matter in the frame of the SU(3)Polyakov-loop extended Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model including $U_A(1)$ anomaly is considered. We discuss the appearance of a peak in the ratio of the number of strange mesons to non-strange mesons known as the horn. The PNJL model gives a schematic description of the chiral phase transition and meson properties at finite temperature and density. Using the model, we can show that the splitting of kaon and anti-kaon masses appears as a result of introduction of density. This may explain the difference in the $K^+/pi^+$ ratio and $K^-/pi^-$ ratio at low $sqrt{s_{NN}}$ and their tendency to the same value at high $sqrt{s_{NN}}$. We also show that the rise in the ratio $K^+/pi^+$ appears near CEP when we build the $K^+/pi^+$ ratio along the phase transition diagram and it can be considered as a critical region signal.
Within the three-flavor PNJL and EPNJL chiral quark models we have obtained pseudoscalar meson properties in quark matter at finite temperature $T$ and baryochemical potential $mu_B$. We compare the meson pole (Breit-Wigner) approximation with the Beth-Uhlenbeck (BU) approach that takes into account the continuum of quark-antiquark scattering states when determining the partial densities of pions and kaons. We evaluate the kaon-to-pion ratios along the (pseudo-)critical line in the $T-mu_B$ plane as a proxy for the chemical freezeout line, whereby the variable $x=T/mu_B$ is introduced that corresponds to the conserved entropy per baryon as initial condition for the heavy-ion collision experiments. We present a comparison with the experimental pattern of kaon-to-pion ratios within the BU approach and using $x$-dependent pion and strange quark potentials. A sharp horn effect in the energy dependence $K^+/pi^+$ ratio is explained by the enhanced pion production at energies above $sqrt{s_{NN}}=8$ GeV, when the system enters the regime of meson dominance. This effect is in line with the enhancement of low-momentum pion spectra that is discussed as a precursor of the pion Bose condensation and entails the occurrence of a nonequilibrium pion chemical potential of the order of the pion mass. We elucidate that the horn effect is not related to the existence of a critical endpoint in the QCD phase diagram.
To learn about a physical system of interest, experimental results must be able to discriminate among models. We introduce a geometrical measure to quantify the distance between models for pseudoscalar-meson photoproduction in amplitude space. Experimental observables, with finite accuracy, map to probability distributions in amplitude space, and the characteristic width scale of such distributions needs to be smaller than the distance between models if the observable data are going to be useful. We therefore also introduce a method for evaluating probability distributions in amplitude space that arise as a result of one or more measurements, and show how one can use this to determine what further measurements are going to be necessary to be able to discriminate among models.
Consistent SU(6) and SU(8) spin-flavor extensions of the SU(3) flavor Weinberg-Tomozawa (WT) meson-baryon chiral Lagrangian are constructed, which incorporate vector meson degrees of freedom. In the charmless sector, the on-shell approximation to the Bethe-Salpeter (BS) approach successfully reproduces previous SU(3) WT results for the lowest-lying s--wave negative parity baryon resonances. It also provides some information on the dynamics of heavier ones and of the lightest d-wave negative parity resonances, as e.g. the Lambda(1520). For charmed baryons the scheme is consistent with heavy quark symmetry, and our preliminary results in the strangeness-less charm C=+1 sector describe the main features of the three-star J^P=1/2^- Lambda_c(2595) and J^P=3/2^- Lambda_c(2625) resonances. We also find a second broad J^P=1/2^- state close to the Lambda_c(2595)