arXiv subjects

Saul Hernandez-Ortiz

Publications and source records attributed to Saul Hernandez-Ortiz.

11 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2023

Quarkyonic Mean Field Theory

We discuss mean field theory of Quarkyonic matter at zero temperature. We treat the nucleons with contact interactions in mean field approximation, discussing both vector and scalar mean field interactions. We treat the quarks without mean field vector interactions, but allow mass terms to be generated consistent from a scalar mean field consistent with the additive quark model for quark masses. Quarkyonic matter is composed of a shell of nucleons that under-occupy the total available phase space associated with the underlying quark degrees of freedom. The fully occupied Fermi sphere beneath this shell of nucleons at high densities is thought of as quarks, but when this fully occupied distribution of states first appears, although the phase space is filled, the matter is at low density. For the transition between this low density and high density saturated matter, we advocate a dual description of the fully filled Fermi sea in terms of hadrons, and make a phenomenological hypothesis for the equation of state of this matter. We then proceed to an example where the mean field interactions are all vector and only associated with the nucleons, ignoring the effects of mass change associated with the scalar interactions. Except for the effects of Pauli blocking, the nucleons and quarks do not interact. To get a reasonable transition to Quarkyonic matter the interaction of the quarks among themselves are assumed to be non-perturbative, and a simple phenomenological relation between quark Fermi energy and density is introduced.

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arXiv2021

Quarkyonic Effective Field Theory, Quark-Nucleon Duality and Ghosts

We present a field theoretical description of quarkyonic matter consisting of quark, nucleon and ghost fields coupling to mesonic degrees of freedom. The ghosts are present to cancel over-counting of nucleon states that are Pauli blocked by the quark Fermi sea. Such a theory becomes an effective field theory of nucleons at low baryon density, and as such will reproduce nucleonic matter phenomenology. This theory can accommodate chiral symmetry restoration and the dynamical generation of a shell of nucleons at the Fermi surface. It is valid for finite temperature and density. In such a theory, quark-nucleon duality is accomplished by inclusion of ghost fields so that the nucleons extra degrees of freedom, that are beyond those of quarks, are compensated by the ghost fields.

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arXiv2020

Excluded-volume model for quarkyonic matter II: Three-flavor shell-like distribution of baryons in phase space

We extend the excluded-volume model of isospin symmetric two-flavor dense quarkyonic matter [Phys. Rev. C 101, 035201 (2020)] including strange particles and address its implications for neutron stars. The effective sizes of baryons are defined from the diverging hard-core potentials in the short interdistance regime. Around the hard-core density, the repulsive core between baryons at short distances leads to a saturation in the number density of baryons and generates perturbative quarks from the lower phase space, which leads to the shell-like distribution of baryons by the Pauli exclusion principle. The strange-quark Fermi sea always appears at high densities but the $Λ$ hyperon shell only appears when the effective size of the $Λ$ hyperon is smaller than the effective size of nucleons. We find that the pressure of strange quarkyonic matter can be large enough to support neutron stars with two times solar mass and can have a large sound speed, $c_s^2 \simeq 0.7$. The fraction of the baryon number carried by perturbative quarks is about 30% at the inner core of most massive neutron stars.

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arXiv2020

Excluded-volume model for quarkyonic Matter: Three-flavor baryon-quark Mixture

The single-flavor excluded-volume model based on the effective size of baryons reproduces the hard-soft density evolution of the equation of state (EoS) required by the recent studies of GW170817. This phenomenological model basically realizes the concept of quarkyonic matter which is introduced from large-$N_{c}$ gauge theory for dense matter. Enhanced nucleon interactions and dynamically generated quark degrees of freedom can reproduce the hard-soft evolution of the EoS. In this paper, we extend the excluded-volume model to a three-flavor system by considering electromagnetic charge and possible weak equilibrium in order to obtain a proper description for the hard-soft behavior of the EoS inferred from the gravitational waves observations.

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arXiv2020

Fluctuating temperature and baryon chemical potential in heavy-ion collisions and the position of the critical end point in the effective QCD phase diagram

We use the linear sigma model with quarks to locate the critical end point in the effective QCD phase diagram accounting for fluctuations in temperature and quark chemical potential. For this purpose, we use the non-equilibrium formalism provided by the superstatistics framework. We compute the effective potential in the high- and low-temperature approximations up to sixth order and include the contribution of ring diagrams to account for plasma screening effects. We fix the model parameters from relations between the thermal sigma and pion masses imposing a first order phase transition at zero temperature and a finite critical value for the baryon chemical potential that we take of order of the nucleon mass. We find that the CEP displacement due to fluctuations in temperature and/or quark chemical potential is almost negligible.

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arXiv2018

Aspects of the pseudo Chiral Magnetic Effect in 2D Weyl-Dirac Matter

A connection is established between the continuum limit of the low-energy tight-binding description of graphene immersed in an in-plane magnetic field and the Chiral Magnetic Effect in Quantum Chromodynamics. A combination of mass gaps that explicitly breaks the equivalence of the Dirac cones, favoring an imbalance of pseudo-chiralities, is the essential ingredient to generate a non-dissipative electric current along the external field. Currents, number densities and condensates generated from this setup are investigated for different hierarchies of the energy scales involved.

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arXiv2018

Thermo-magnetic evolution of the QCD strong coupling

We study the one-loop gluon polarization tensor at zero and finite temperature in the presence of a magnetic field, to extract the thermo-magnetic evolution of the strong coupling $α_s$. We analyze four distinct regimes, to wit, the small and large field cases, both at zero and at high temperature. From a renormalization group analysis we show that at zero temperature, either for small or large magnetic fields, and for a fixed transferred momentum $Q^2$, $α_s$ grows with the field strength with respect to its vacuum value. However, at high temperature and also for a fixed value of $Q^2$ we find two different cases: When the magnetic field is even larger than the squared temperature, $α_s$ also grows with the field strength. On the contrary, when the squared temperature is larger than the magnetic field, a turnover behavior occurs and $α_s$ decreases with the field strength. This thermo-magnetic behavior of $α_s$ can help explain the inverse magnetic catalysis phenomenon found by lattice QCD calculations.

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arXiv2018

QCD phase diagram from chiral symmetry restoration: analytic approach at high and low temperature using the Linear Sigma Model with Quarks

We use the linear sigma model with quarks to study the QCD phase diagram from the point of view of chiral symmetry restoration. We compute the leading order effective potential for high and low temperatures and finite quark chemical potential, up to the contribution of the ring diagrams to account for the plasma screening effects. We fix the values of the model couplings using physical values for the input parameters such as the vacuum pion and sigma masses, the critical temperature at vanishing quark chemical potential and the conjectured end point value of the baryon chemical potential of the transition line at vanishing temperature. We also make the analysis for the same input parameters but with vanishing pion mass. We find that the critical end point (CEP) is located at low temperatures and high quark chemical potentials $(315<μ^{\text{CEP}}<349\ MeV,18< T^{\text{CEP}}<45\ MeV)$.

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arXiv2017

Prompt photon yield and elliptic flow from gluon fusion induced by magnetic fields in relativistic heavy-ion collisions

We compute photon production at early times in semi-central relativistic heavy-ion collisions from non-equilibrium gluon fusion induced by a magnetic field. The calculation accounts for the main features of the collision at these early times, namely, the intense magnetic field and the high gluon occupation number. The gluon fusion channel is made possible by the magnetic field and would otherwise be forbidden due to charge conjugation invariance. Thus, the photon yield from this process is an excess over calculations without magnetic field effects. We compare this excess to the difference between PHENIX data and recent hydrodynamic calculations for the photon transverse momentum distribution and elliptic flow coefficient $v_2$. We show that with reasonable values for the saturation scale and magnetic field strength, the calculation helps to better describe the experimental results obtained at RHIC energies for the lowest part of the transverse photon momentum.

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arXiv2016

Chiral Symmetry transition in the Linear Sigma Model with quarks: Counting effective QCD degrees of freedom from low to high temperature

We use the linear sigma model coupled to quarks, together with a plausible location of the critical end point (CEP), to study the chiral symmetry transition in the QCD phase diagram. We compute the effective potential at finite temperature and density up to the contribution of the ring diagrams, both in the low and high temperature limits, and use it to compute the pressure and the position of the CEP. In the high temperature regime, by comparing to results from extrapolated lattice data, we determine the model coupling constants. Demanding that the CEP remains in the same location when described in the high temperature limit, we determine again the couplings and the pressure for the low temperature regime. We show that this procedure gives an average description of the lattice QCD results for the pressure and that the change from the low to the high temperature domains in this quantity can be attributed to the change in the coupling constants which in turn we link to the change in the effective degrees of freedom.

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arXiv2015

The effective QCD phase diagram and the critical end point

We study the QCD phase diagram on the plane of temperature T and quark chemical potential mu, modelling the strong interactions with the linear sigma model coupled to quarks. The phase transition line is found from the effective potential at finite T and mu taking into accounts the plasma screening effects. We find the location of the critical end point (CEP) to be (mu^CEP/T_c,T^CEP/T_c) sim (1.2,0.8), where T_c is the (pseudo)critical temperature for the crossover phase transition at vanishing mu. This location lies within the region found by lattice inspired calculations. The results show that in the linear sigma model, the CEP's location in the phase diagram is expectedly determined solely through chiral symmetry breaking. The same is likely to be true for all other models which do not exhibit confinement, provided the proper treatment of the plasma infrared properties for the description of chiral symmetry restoration is implemented. Similarly, we also expect these corrections to be substantially relevant in the QCD phase diagram.

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