No Arabic abstract
We study the production of strange hadrons in nucleus-nucleus collisions from 4 to 160 A GeV within the Parton-Hadron-String Dynamics (PHSD) transport approach that is extended to incorporate essentials aspects of chiral symmetry restoration (CSR) in the hadronic sector (via the Schwinger mechanism) on top of the deconfinement phase transition as implemented in PHSD. Especially the $K^+/pi^+$ and the $(Lambda+Sigma^0)/pi^-$ ratios in central Au+Au collisions are found to provide information on the relative importance of both transitions. The modelling of chiral symmetry restoration is driven by the pion-nucleon $Sigma$-term in the computation of the quark scalar condensate $<q {bar q}>$ that serves as an order parameter for CSR and also scales approximately with the effective quark masses $m_s$ and $m_q$. Furthermore, the nucleon scalar density $rho_s$, which also enters the computation of $<q {bar q}>$, is evaluated within the nonlinear $sigma-omega$ model which is constraint by Dirac-Brueckner calculations and low energy heavy-ion reactions. The Schwinger mechanism (for string decay) fixes the ratio of strange to light quark production in the hadronic medium. We find that above $sim$80 A GeV the reaction dynamics of heavy nuclei is dominantly driven by partonic degrees-of-freedom such that traces of the chiral symmetry restoration are hard to identify. Our studies support the conjecture of quarkyonic matter in heavy-ion collisions from about 5 to 40 A GeV and provide a microscopic explanation for the maximum in the $K^+/pi^+$ ratio at about 30 A GeV which only shows up if a transition to partonic degrees-of-freedom is incorporated in the reaction dynamics and is discarded in the traditional hadron-string models.
We develop a new dynamical model for high energy heavy-ion collisions in the beam energy region of the highest net-baryon densities on the basis of non-equilibrium microscopic transport model JAM and macroscopic 3+1D hydrodynamics by utilizing a dynamical initialization method. In this model,dynamical fluidization of a system is controlled by the source terms of the hydrodynamic fields. In addition, time dependent core-corona separation of hot regions is implemented. We show that our new model describes multiplicities and mean transverse mass in heavy-ion collisions within a beam energy region of $3<sqrt{s_{NN}}<30$ GeV. Good agreement of the beam energy dependence of the $K^+/pi^+$ ratio is obtained, which is explained by the fact that a part of the system is not thermalized in our core-corona approach.
Based on the fact that the mass difference between the chiral partners is an order parameter of chiral phase transition and that the chiral order parameter reduces substantially at the chemical freeze-out point in ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions, we argue that the production ratio of $K_1$ over $K^*$ in such collisions should be substantially larger than that predicted in the statistical hadronization model. We further show that while the enhancement effect might be contaminated by the relatively larger decrease of $K_1$ meson than $K^*$ meson during the hadronic phase, the signal will be visible through a systematic study on centrality as the kinetic freeze-out temperature is higher and the hadronic life time shorter in peripheral collisions than in central collisions.
Chiral symmetry imposes some constrains on hadron correlation functions in dense medium. These constraints imply a certain general structure of the two- and three-point correlation functions of chiral partners and lead to the effect of mixing arising from the interaction of the long-ranged nuclear pions with corresponding interpolating currents. It reflects the phenomena of partial restoration of chiral symmetry. We consider soft pion corrections for quark condensates and several possible pairs of chiral partners for both mesons and nucleons and analyse their mixing patterns. We explored both naive and mirror assignments for the chiral partner of nucleon and discussed possible phenomenological consequence.
The Chiral Magnetic Effect (CME) is a remarkable phenomenon that stems from highly nontrivial interplay of QCD chiral symmetry, axial anomaly, and gluonic topology. It is of fundamental importance to search for the CME in experiments. The heavy ion collisions provide a unique environment where a hot chiral-symmetric quark-gluon plasma is created, gluonic topological fluctuations generate chirality imbalance, and very strong magnetic fields $|vec{bf B}|sim m_pi^2$ are present during the early stage of such collisions. Significant efforts have been made to look for CME signals in heavy ion collision experiments. In this contribution we give a brief overview on the status of such efforts.
I revisit the phase structure of hot and dense matter out of quarks and gluons with some historical consideration on the color deconfinement and chiral phase transitions. My goal is to make clear which part of the QCD phase diagram is under theoretical control and which part is not. I demonstrate that an uncommon but logically possible scenario other than the standard phase diagram cannot be ruled out. My emphasis is on the concern that one should correctly understand what kind of phenomenon occurs associated with the phase boundary line on the diagram. It is not quite obvious, in particular, where chiral symmetry restoration plays a phenomenological role in the temperature and baryon density plane except at the QCD (chiral) critical point.