From color glass condensate to quark–gluon plasma through the event horizon

Abstract

We propose a new thermalization scenario for heavy ion collisions which at sufficiently high energies implies the phase transition to the quark-gluon plasma. The key ingredient of our approach is the Hawking-Unruh effect: an observer moving with an acceleration a experiences the influence of a thermal bath with an effective temperature T = a/2π, similar to the one present in the vicinity of a black hole horizon. For electric charges moving in external electromagnetic fields of realistic strength, the resulting temperature appears too small to be detected. However for partons in strong color fields the effect should be observable: in the Color Glass Condensate picture, the strength of the color-electric field is E ∼ Q 2 s /g (Q s is the saturation scale, and g is the strong coupling), the typical acceleration is a ∼ Q s , and the heat bath temperature is T = Q s /2π ∼ 200 MeV. In nuclear collisions at sufficiently high energies the effect can induce a rapid thermalization over the time period of τ ≃ 2π/Q s ≃ 1 fm accompanied by phase transitions. We consider a specific example of chiral symmetry restoration induced by a rapid deceleration of the colliding nuclei. We argue that parton saturation in the initial nuclear wave functions is a necessary pre-condition for the formation of quark-gluon plasma. We discuss the implications of our "black hole thermalization" scenario for various observables in relativistic heavy ion collisions.2

Production ofqq¯pairs in proton-nucleus collisions at high energies

“…In that sense our result is perturbative. It was pointed out in [39,40,41] that there can be a significant non-perturbative contribution to particle production in high energy QCD. The investigation of this effect is beyond the scope of the present paper: however it certainly deserves further study.…”

Local violation effects and thermalization in QCD: Views from quantum field theory and holography

“…Different aspects of this idea were advocated in a number of recent papers, see e.g. [8,36]. The problem of calculating of the effective parameter "a" is obviously very hard problem of strongly interacting QCD.…”

Transient field fluctuations effects ind+Auand Au+Au collisions atsNN=200Pop1, Gyulassy2, Barrette3 et al. 2007Phys. Rev. C21090View full textAdd to dashboardCite

“…Two possible processes that lead to an increase of strangeness production within the framework of the Schwinger mechanism are: i) an increase in the field strength by a modified string tension κ [14,24,39], or ii) a drop in the quark masses due to chiral symmetry restoration [40,41,42,43]. A specific chiral symmetry restoration could be induced by a rapid deceleration of the colliding nuclei [44].…”