arXiv subjects

H. -J. Pirner

Publications and source records attributed to H. -J. Pirner.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2015

Pion-pion cross section from proton-proton collisions at the LHC

The zero-degree calorimeters (ZDC) installed in the ALICE, ATLAS and CMS experiments at the LHC, make possible simultaneous detection of forward-backward leading neutrons, pp=>nXn. Such data with sufficiently high statistics could be a source of information about the pion-pion total cross section at high energies, provided that the absorption corrections, which are expected to be strong, are well understood. Otherwise, making a plausible assumption about the magnitude of the pion-pion cross section, one can consider such measurements as a way to study the absorption effects, which is the main focus of the present paper. These effects introduced at the amplitude level, are found to be different for the pion fluxes, which either conserve or flip the nucleon helicity. The pion fluxes from both colliding protons are essentially reduced by absorption, moreover, there is a common absorption suppression factor, which breaks down the factorized form of the cross section. We also evaluate the feed-down corrections related to the initial/final state inelastic processes possessing a rapidity gap, and found them to be small in the kinematic range under consideration. The contribution of other iso-vector Reggeons, spin-flip natural parity rho and a2, and spin non-flip unnatural parity a1 are also evaluated and found to be rather small.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2009

Pressure and interaction measure of the gluon plasma

We explore the thermodynamics of the gluon plasma in SU(3) Yang-Mills theory emerging from the non-trivial spatial dynamics of valence gluons. The lattice data suggest that these gluons interact with each other linearly at large spatial separations. At high temperatures, valence gluons should reproduce the pressure of the non-interacting Stefan-Boltzmann plasma along with the leading perturbative correction. These properties of valence gluons can be modeled in terms of the integral over their trajectories. We calculate such a world-line integral analytically and obtain the pressure and the interaction measure $(\varepsilon-3p)/T^4$ of the gluon plasma. Additionally, we account for the contributions of stochastic background fields to these thermodynamic quantities. The results turn out to be in a good agreement with the corresponding lattice data. In particular, the lattice-simulated peak of the interaction measure near the deconfinement critical temperature is reproduced.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2008

Quantum-mechanical description of in-medium fragmentation

We present a quantum-mechanical description of quark-hadron fragmentation in a nuclear environment. It employs the path-integral formulation of quantum mechanics, which takes care of all phases and interferences, and which contains all relevant time scales, like production, coherence, formation, etc. The cross section includes the probability of pre-hadron (colorless dipole) production both inside and outside the medium. Moreover, it also includes inside-outside production, which is a typical quantum-mechanical interference effect (like twin-slit electron propagation). We observe a substantial suppression caused by the medium, even if the pre-hadron is produced outside the medium and no energy loss is involved. This important source of suppression is missed in the usual energy-loss scenario interpreting the effect of jet quenching observed in heavy ion collisions. This may be one of the reasons of a too large gluon density, reported by such analyzes.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2008

Parton fragmentation in the vacuum and in the medium

We present the mini-proceedings of the workshop on ``Parton fragmentation in the vacuum and in the medium'' held at the European Centre for Theoretical Studies in Nuclear Physics and Related Areas (ECT*, Trento) in February 2008. The workshop gathered both theorists and experimentalists to discuss the current status of investigations of quark and gluon fragmentation into hadrons at different accelerator facilities (LEP, B-factories, JLab, HERA, RHIC, and Tevatron) as well as preparations for extension of these studies at the LHC. The main physics topics covered were: (i) light-quark and gluon fragmentation in the vacuum including theoretical (global fits analyses and MLLA) and experimental (data from e+e-, p-p, e-p collisions) aspects, (ii) strange and heavy-quark fragmentation, (iii) parton fragmentation in cold QCD matter (nuclear DIS), and (iv) medium-modified fragmentation in hot and dense QCD matter (high-energy nucleus-nucleus collisions). These mini-proceedings consist of an introduction and short summaries of the talks presented at the meeting.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2008

Jet quenching parameter \hat q in the stochastic QCD vacuum with Landau damping

We argue that the radiative energy loss of a parton traversing the quark-gluon plasma is determined by Landau damping of soft modes in the plasma. Using this idea, we calculate the jet quenching parameter of a gluon. The calculation is done in SU(3) quenched QCD within the stochastic vacuum model. At the LHC-relevant temperatures, the result depends on the gluon condensate, the vacuum correlation length, and the gluon Debye mass. Numerically, when the temperature varies from T=T_c to T=900 MeV, the jet quenching parameter rises from \hat q=0 to approximately 1.8 GeV^2/fm. We compare our results with the predictions of perturbative QCD and other calculations.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2007

Perturbative fragmentation

The Berger model of perturbative fragmentation of quarks to pions is improved by providing an absolute normalization and keeping all terms in a (1-z) expansion, which makes the calculation valid at all values of fractional pion momentum z. We also replace the nonrelativistic wave function of a loosely bound pion by the more realistic procedure of projecting to the light-cone pion wave function, which in turn is taken from well known models. The full calculation does not confirm the (1-z)^2 behavior of the fragmentation function (FF) predicted in for $z>0.5$, and only works at very large z>0.95, where it is in reasonable agreement with phenomenological FFs. Otherwise, we observe quite a different z-dependence which grossly underestimates data at smaller z. The disagreement is reduced after the addition of pions from decays of light vector mesons, but still remains considerable. The process dependent higher twist terms are also calculated exactly and found to be important at large z and/or pT.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2007

Jet lag effect and leading hadron production

We propose a solution for the long standing puzzle of a too steeply falling fragmentation function for a quark fragmenting into a pion, calculated by Berger [1] in the Born approximation. Contrary to the simple anticipation that gluon resummation worsens the problem, we find good agreement with data. Higher quark Fock states slow down the quark, an effect which we call jet lag. It can be also expressed in terms of vacuum energy loss. As a result, the space-time development of the jet shrinks and the $z$-dependence becomes flatter than in the Born approximation. The space-time pattern is also of great importance for in-medium hadronization.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2007

A Heavy Quark-Antiquark Pair in Hot QCD

Thermodynamics of a heavy quark-antiquark pair in SU(3)-QCD is studied both below and above the deconfinement critical temperature $T_c$. In the quenched case, a model of the string passing through heavy valence gluons yields a correct estimate of $T_c$ and the critical behavior of the string tension below $T_c$. For two light flavors, entropy and internal energy below $T_c$ can be obtained from the partition function of heavy-light mesons and baryons. To calculate the free energy of the system above $T_c$, we apply second-order perturbation theory in the interaction of the quark-gluon plasma constituents with the static quark-antiquark pair. The results for the entropy and internal energy, obtained both below and above $T_c$, are compared with recent lattice data.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2007

Following Gluonic World Lines to Find the QCD Coupling in the Infrared

Using a parametrization of the Wilson loop with the minimal-area law, we calculate the polarization operator of a valence gluon, which propagates in the confining background. This enables us to obtain the infrared freezing (i.e. finiteness) of the running strong coupling in the confinement phase, as well as in the deconfinement phase up to the temperature of dimensional reduction. The momentum scale defining the onset of freezing is found both analytically and numerically. The nonperturbative contribution to the thrust variable, originating from the freezing, makes the value of this variable closer to the experimental one.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2006

On the Thermodynamics of a Heavy Quark-Antiquark Pair

Thermodynamics of a heavy quark-antiquark pair in SU(3)-QCD is studied below the deconfinement critical temperature, $T_c$. In the quenched case, a model of the string passing through heavy valence gluons yields a correct estimate of $T_c$ and a behavior of the string tension near $T_c$. For two light flavors, entropy and internal energy can be obtained from the partition function of heavy-light mesons and baryons. They are in a good qualitative agreement with the lattice results.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2006

Quantum Fields on the Light Front, Formulation in Coordinates close to the Light Front, Lattice Approximation

We review the fundamental ideas of quantizing a theory on a Light Front including the Hamiltonian approach to the problem of bound states on the Light Front and the limiting transition from formulating a theory in Lorentzian coordinates (where the quantization occurs on spacelike hyperplanes) to the theory on the Light Front, which demonstrates the equivalence of these variants of the theory. We describe attempts to find such a form of the limiting transition for gauge theories on the Wilson lattice.

hep-th↗

arXiv2006

Chiral Expansion from Renormalization Group Flow Equations

We explore the influence of the current quark mass on observables in the low energy regime of hadronic interactions within a renormalization group analysis of the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model in its bosonized form. We derive current quark mass expansions for the pion decay constant and the pion mass, and we recover analytically the universal logarithmic dependence. A numerical solution of the renormalization group flow equations enables us to determine effective low energy constants from the model. We find values consistent with the phenomenological estimates used in chiral perturbation theory.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2006

Volume and Quark Mass Dependence of the Chiral Phase Transition

We investigate chiral symmetry restoration in finite spatial volume and at finite temperature by calculating the dependence of the chiral phase transition temperature on the size of the spatial volume and the current-quark mass for the quark-meson model, using the proper-time Renormalization Group approach. We find that the critical temperature is weakly dependent on the size of the spatial volume for large current-quark masses, but depends strongly on it for small current-quark masses. In addition, for small volumes we observe a dependence on the choice of quark boundary conditions.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2005

Volume Dependence of the Pion Mass in the Quark-Meson-Model

We consider the quark-meson-model in a finite three-dimensional volume using the Schwinger proper-time renormalization group. We derive and solve the flow equations for finite volume in local potential approximation. In order to break chiral symmetry in the finite volume, we introduce a small current quark mass. The corresponding effective meson potential breaks chiral O(4) symmetry explicitly, depending on sigma and pion fields separately. We calculate the volume dependence of the pion mass and of the pion decay constant with the renormalization group flow equations and compare with recent results from chiral perturbation theory in a finite volume.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2003

Log(1/x) Gluon Distribution and Structure Functions in the Loop-Loop Correlation Model

We consider the interaction of the partonic fluctuation of a scalar ``photon'' with an external color field to calculate the leading and next-to-leading order gluon distribution of the proton following the work done by Dosch-Hebecker-Metz-Pirner. We relate these gluon distributions to the short and long distance behavior of the cross section of an adjoint dipole scattering off a proton. The leading order result is a constant while the next-to-leading order result shows a ln(1/x) enhancement at small x. To get numerical results for the gluon distributions at the initial scale Q^2_0=1.8 GeV^2, we compute the adjoint dipole-proton cross section in the loop-loop correlation model. Quark distributions at the same initial scale are parametrized according to Regge theory. We evolve quark and gluon distributions to higher Q^2 values using the DGLAP equation and compute charm and proton structure functions in the small-x region for different Q^2 values.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2002

The Spectrum of the Dirac Operator in the Linear Sigma Model with Quarks

We derive the spectrum of the Dirac operator for the linear sigma-model with quarks in the large N_c approximation using renormalization group flow equations. For small eigenvalues, the Banks-Casher relation and the vanishing linear term are recovered. We calculate the coefficient of the next to leading term and investigate the spectrum beyond the low energy regime.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2001

Renormalization Group Flow in large N_c

We calculate renormalization group flow equations for the linear sigma-model in large N_c approximation. The flow equations decouple and can be solved analytically. The solution is equal to a self consistent solution of the NJL model in the same approximation, which shows that flow equations are a promising method to extend the calculation to higher order in 1/N_c. Including explicit chiral symmetry breaking, the large N_c approximation describes physics reasonably well. We further compare the analytic solution to the usually used polynomial truncation and find consistency.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2001

Enhanced Minijet Production in $A-A$ Collisions from Gluons with Large Transverse Momenta

We find supersaturation for the intrinsic gluon distribution of nuclei, i.e. the low $x$ unintegrated nuclear gluon distribution peaks at intermediate transverse momenta $k_t=Q_s$ and vanishes at zero $k_t$. Taking into account the intrinsic transverse momenta of the gluons and the saturation scale $p_s$ of the produced gluons, we calculate the minijet cross section arising from gluon gluon scattering for RHIC energies. For central collisions at $\sqrt{s}=200GeV$ the saturation scale $p_s \approx 1.4$ GeV is larger due to intrinsic $k_t$ effects and increases with energy. Our theoretical results on charged particle multiplicity agree very well with the recent experimental data from RHIC.

hep-ph↗