Hot and dense matter in quark-hadron models

TL;DR

This paper develops a unified model incorporating hadronic and quark degrees of freedom, using an effective Polyakov loop and a flavor-SU(3) hadronic model, to study the phase transition to quark-gluon plasma at high temperatures and densities.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive approach combining hadronic and quark models with a Polyakov loop to analyze phase transitions in dense matter.

Findings

Successful reproduction of nuclear matter properties

Effective modeling of the deconfinement transition

Agreement with lattice gauge calculations

Abstract

We present a general approach to incorporate hadronic as well as quark degrees of freedom in a unified approach. This approach implements the correct degrees of freedom at high as well as low temperatures and densities. An effective Polyakov loop field serves as the order parameter for deconfinement. We employ a well-tested hadronic flavor-SU(3) model based on a chirally symmetric formulation that reproduces properties of ground state nuclear matter and yields good descriptions of nuclei and hypernuclei. Excluded volume effects simulating the finite size of the hadrons drive the transition to quarks at high temperatures and densities. We study the phase structure of the model and the transition to the quark gluon plasma and compare results to lattice gauge calculations.