Electric-Magnetic Struggle in QGP, Deconfinement and Baryons

TL;DR

This paper explores how the near-equilibrium of electric and magnetic components in quark-gluon plasma explains its unusual properties, with simulations showing small viscosity and diffusion, and predicts surviving baryons above the critical temperature.

Contribution

It introduces the idea that electric-magnetic equilibrium in QGP accounts for its properties and predicts the existence of baryons and gluonic chains above the deconfinement temperature.

Findings

Electric-magnetic plasma exhibits high scattering rates due to magnetic bottle effects.

Simulations show small viscosity and diffusion rates comparable to RHIC data.

Surviving baryons and gluonic chains are predicted above T_c.

Abstract

We argue that quite unusual properties of Quark-Gluon Plasma in the RHIC temperature domain $T=(1-2)T_c$ are consequences of the approximate equilibrium between electric and magnetic sectors reached above the deconfinement temperature. Already classical study of few body motion in a electric-magnetic plasma shows abnormally large scattering rate due to the so called ``magnetic bottle'' effect. Molecular dynamics simulation have found that equal mixture of electric and magnetic quasiparticles do produce plasmas of small viscosity and even smaller diffusion rate, comparable to what is needed to explain RHIC data and also to what follows from AdS/CFT. As a separate issue, we point out that right above $T_c$ there should be surviving s-wave baryons made of quarks ($N,\Delta$), as well as adjoint objects, 3-gluon and 3-monopole chains (the latter being nothing else but ``calorons'' or finite-T instantons).