Quark Potential in a Quark-Meson Plasma

TL;DR

This paper explores how quark interactions are affected by meson exchanges in a quark-meson plasma at finite temperature and density, revealing oscillation phenomena and strong coupling near the chiral phase transition.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of quark potential oscillations and coupling behavior in a finite temperature and density regime within the NJL model, highlighting the critical point effects.

Findings

Identification of Friedel and Yukawa oscillations in the quark potential.

Strong coupling of quark-meson plasma near the critical temperature.

Maximum coupling occurs at the chiral phase transition point.

Abstract

We investigate quark potential by considering meson exchanges in the two flavor Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model at finite temperature and density. There are two kinds of oscillations in the chiral restoration phase, one is the Friedel oscillation due to the sharp quark Fermi surface at high density, and the other is the Yukawa oscillation driven by the complex meson poles at high temperature. The quark-meson plasma is strongly coupled in the temperature region $1\le T/T_c \lesssim 3$ with $T_c$ being the critical temperature of chiral phase transition. The maximum coupling in this region is located at the critical point.