Hadron formation in the deconfined matter at RHIC and LHC

TL;DR

This paper investigates hadron formation mechanisms in the quark-gluon plasma created in RHIC and LHC heavy ion collisions, highlighting evidence for in-medium fragmentation and bound state formation, with implications for understanding the QCD phase transition.

Contribution

It provides new insights into hadron formation processes, including in-medium fragmentation and bound state formation, supported by lattice QCD and model comparisons, in the context of heavy ion collisions.

Findings

Evidence for in-medium fragmentation of non-equilibrated partons

Detection of bound state formation in the quark-gluon phase

Flavor and baryon number dependencies in hadron formation probabilities

Abstract

We have studied the probability of two succinct particle production mechanisms, likely to occur in the transition from the deconfined medium produced in RHIC and LHC heavy ion collisions back to the hadron gas, which is abundant at lower temperatures. Evidence has been found for in-medium fragmentation of non-equilibrated partons in the deconfined medium as well as bound state formation in the quark-gluon phase itself, as described by lattice QCD . Through the comparison to PNJL model calculations we attempt to quantify an extended phase of mixed degrees of freedom in a temperature range just above the QCD transition temperature. The extracted hadron formation probabilities exhibit flavor and baryon number dependencies, which are experimentally verifiable. We confront the calculations of the non-equilibrium and equilibrium particle production in heavy ion collisions with measurements from RHIC and LHC.