Calculation of Hadronic Excitations of the Quark-Gluon Plasma

Abstract

We present calculations of the spectral functions of various hadronic current correlators at finite temperature, making use of the Nambu--Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model and the real-time finite-temperature formalism. We study the scalar-isoscalar correlation function in a SU(3)-flavor model, as well as the pseudoscalar and vector correlation functions. We relate our analysis to our recent calculations of the properties of mesons for $T T_c$, where it is possible to neglect the effects of confinement. We find important excitations in the scalar sector corresponding to what are predominately singlet and octet states. The singlet state, which is at 247 MeV at $T=1.2 T_c$, evolves from the $f_0(980)$ which has an energy of about 400 MeV before it disappears from the spectrum of bound states for $T>0.95 T_c$. The octet state seen at $T=1.2 T_c$, which has a mass of about 860 MeV, evolves from a nodeless state that has an energy of about 1470 MeV at T=0 in our model. As noted in the literature, these modes may play an important role in the cooling and hadronization of quark-gluon droplets excited in heavy-ion collisions. We note that the real-time formalism has some advantages over the imaginary-time formalism, since the real-time formalism provides information concerning the widths of the excitations calculated using our model.