arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Joseph I. Kapusta.
We incorporate chiral symmetry breaking in a soft-wall version of the AdS/QCD model by using a modified dilaton profile and a quartic term in the bulk scalar potential. This allows one to separate the dependence on spontaneous and explicit chiral symmetry breaking. The resulting mass spectra in the scalar, vector and axial-vector sectors compares favorably with the respective QCD resonances.
Substantial collective flow is observed in collisions between large nuclei at high energy, and the data are well-reproduced by perfect fluid dynamics. In a separate development, calculation of the dimensionless ratio of shear viscosity $η$ to entropy density within AdS/CFT yields $η/s = 1/4π$, which has been conjectured to be a lower bound for any physical system. It is shown that the transition from hadrons to quarks and gluons has behavior similar to helium, nitrogen, and water at and near their phase transitions in the ratio $η/s$. Conversely, there are indications that the ratio of bulk viscosity $ζ$ to entropy density may have a maximum in the vicinity of the phase transition. Therefore it is possible that experimental measurements can pinpoint the location of the transition or rapid crossover in QCD via the ratios $η/s$ and $ζ/s$ in addition to and independently of the equation of state.
We show how to incorporate chiral symmetry breaking in the soft-wall version of the AdS/QCD model by using a modified dilaton profile and a quartic term in the bulk scalar potential. This allows one to separate the dependence on spontaneous and explicit chiral symmetry breaking. Moreover our 5D model automatically incorporates linear trajectories and non chiral-symmetry restoration for highly excited radial states. We compare our resulting mass spectra in the scalar, vector and axial-vector sectors with the respective QCD resonances and find reasonable agreement using the known values for the pion mass and decay constant.
We employ a simple effective model to study the chiral dynamics of two flavors of quarks at finite temperature and density. In particular, we determine the phase diagram in the plane of temperature and baryon chemical potential as a function of the pion mass. An interesting phase structure occurs which results in zero, one or two critical points depending on the value of the vacuum pion mass.
The possibility that experiments at high-energy accelerators could create new forms of matter that would ultimately destroy the Earth has been considered several times in the past quarter century. One consequence of the earliest of these disaster scenarios was that the authors of a 1993 article in "Physics Today" who reviewed the experiments that had been carried out at the Bevalac at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory were placed on the FBI's Unabomber watch list. Later, concerns that experiments at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory might create mini black holes or nuggets of stable strange quark matter resulted in a flurry of articles in the popular press. I discuss this history, as well as Richard A. Posner's provocative analysis and recommendations on how to deal with such scientific risks. I conclude that better communication between scientists and nonscientists would serve to assuage unreasonable fears and focus attention on truly serious potential threats to humankind.
The NA60 experiment has measured low-mass muon pair production in In-In collisions at 158 A GeV with unprecedented precision. We show that this data is reproduced very well by a dynamical model with parameters scaled from fits to measurements of hadronic transverse mass spectra and Hanbury-Brown and Twiss correlations in Pb-Pb and Pb-Au collisions at the same energy. The data is consistent with in-medium properties of $ρ$ and $ω$-mesons at finite temperature and density as deduced from empirical forward-scattering amplitudes. Inclusion of the vacuum decay of the $ρ$-meson after freeze-out is necessary for an understanding of the mass and transverse momentum spectrum of dimuons with $M \apprle 0.9 {\rm GeV}/c^2$.
We solve dynamical equations of motion to determine the conditions under which an over-dense region in the early universe will lead to collapse to a black hole, starting from horizon crossing of the over-dense region to the point of gravitational instability. Here we focus on the sensitivity to QCD and electroweak phase transitions. We then solve rate equations to determine the mass distribution of black holes in the present universe. A second order phase transition or rapid crossover would have significant consequences only if the index of primordial density fluctuations n > 1.25. However, a first order transition would lead to a black hole dominated universe for any realistic value of n including n=1.
Substantial collective flow is observed in collisions between large nuclei at high energy, as evidenced by single-particle transverse momentum distributions and by azimuthal correlations among the produced particles. The data are well-reproduced by perfect fluid dynamics. In a separate development, calculation of the dimensionless ratio of shear viscosity eta to entropy density s by Kovtun, Son and Starinets within AdS/CFT yields eta/s = 1/4pi, and they conjectured that this is a lower bound for any physical system. It is shown that the transition from hadrons to quarks and gluons has behavior similar to helium, nitrogen, and water at and near their phase transitions in the ratio eta/s. Therefore it is possible that experimental measurements can pinpoint the location of this transition or rapid crossover in QCD via the viscosity to entropy ratio in addition to and independently of the equation of state.
We discuss a model for the energy distribution and the early space-time evolution of a heavy ion collision. We estimate the gluon field generated in the wake of hard processes and through primordial fluctuations of the color charges in the nuclei. Without specifying the dynamical mechanism of thermalization we calculate the energy momentum tensor of the following plasma phase. The results of this model can be used as initial conditions for a further hydrodynamic evolution.
Rare hyperon yields such as the Omega and AntiOmega in heavy ion collision experiments are hard to be reproduced by numerical models. This, in combination with the thermal fit to SPS data, seems to call for a new production mechanism beyond the usual ones. Small domain disoriented chiral condensates (DCC) were proposed to be such a source of rare hyperons through skyrmion formation at the chiral phase transition. Here skyrmions are treated as coherent states of baryons on a compact manifold so that the distribution of baryons produced from a skyrmion can be known. From this more refined treatment, the number of topological defects produced are more than doubled to 30 or more and the domain size at the SPS is found to be even smaller than before at 1.1--1.5 fm. IT IS IMPERATIVE THEREFORE NOT TO USE ONLY PION DISTRIBUTION BUT OTHER MEANS FOR OBSERVING DCC.
Enhancement of omega and antiomega baryon production in Pb+Pb collisions at a c.m. energy of 17 A GeV can be explained by the formation of many small disoriented chiral condensate regions. This explanation implies that neutral and charged kaons as well as pions must exhibit novel isospin fluctuations. We compute the distribution of the fraction of neutral pions and kaons from such regions. We then propose robust statistical observables that can be used to extract the novel fluctuations from background contributions in pion and kaon measurements at RHIC and LHC.
Five groups have made predictions involving the production of strange hadrons and entered them in a competition set up by Barbara Jacak, Xin-Nian Wang and myself in the spring of 1998 for the purpose of comparing to first year physics results from RHIC. These predictions are summarized and evaluated.
We derive the effective coarse-grained field equation for the scalar condensate of the linear sigma model in a simple and straightforward manner using linear response theory. The dissipative coefficient is calculated at tree level on the basis of the physical processes of sigma-meson decay and of thermal sigma-mesons and pions knocking sigma-mesons out of the condensate. The field equation is solved for hot matter undergoing either one or three dimensional expansion and cooling in the aftermath of a high energy nuclear collision. The results show that the time constant for returning the scalar condensate to thermal equilibrium is of order 2 fm/c.
We study the dynamical formation of disoriented chiral condensates in very high energy nucleus-nucleus collisions using Bjorken hydrodynamics and relativistic nucleation theory. It is the dynamics of the first order confinement phase transition which controls the evolution of the system. Every bubble or fluctuation of the new, hadronic, phase obtains its own chiral condensate with a probability determined by the Boltzmann weight of the finite temperature effective potential of the linear sigma model. We evaluate domain size and chiral angle distributions, which can be used as initial conditions for the solution of semiclassical field equations.
We estimate the probability that a hard nucleon-nucleon collision is able to nucleate a seed of quark--gluon plasma in the surrounding hot and dense hadronic matter formed during a central collision of two large nuclei at AGS energies. The probability of producing at least one such seed is on the order of 1-100\%. We investigate the influence of quark--gluon plasma formation on the observed multiplicity distribution and find that it may lead to noticable structure in the form of a bump or shoulder.
We investigate the production of baryons and antibaryons in the central rapidity region of high energy nuclear collisions within the framework of the Skyrme model taking into account the effects of explicit chiral symmetry breaking. We argue that the formation of disordered chiral condensates may lead to enhanced baryon-antibaryon production at low transverse momentum.
We consider the form of the chiral symmetry breaking piece of the effective potential in the linear sigma model. Surprisingly, it allows for a second local minimum at both zero and finite temperature. Even though chiral symmetry is not exact, and therefore is not restored in a true phase transition at finite temperature, this second minimum can nevertheless mimic many of the effects of a first order phase transition. We derive a lower limit on the height of the second minimum relative to the global minimum based on cosmological considerations; this limit is so weak as to be practically nonexistent. In high energy nuclear collisions, it may lead to observable effects in Bose-Einstein interferometry due to domain walls and to coherent pion emission.