The $a_1(1260)$ meson and chiral symmetry restoration and deconfinment at finite temperature QCD

TL;DR

This paper uses thermal QCD sum rules to explore the relationship between chiral symmetry restoration and deconfinement, analyzing the temperature dependence of the $a_1(1260)$ meson’s properties and finding deconfinement occurs slightly before chiral restoration.

Contribution

It establishes a connection between chiral symmetry restoration and deconfinement and examines the temperature evolution of the $a_1(1260)$ meson’s parameters using thermal QCD sum rules.

Findings

Deconfinement occurs at a slightly lower temperature than chiral-symmetry restoration.

The $a_1(1260)$ width increases with temperature.

The $a_1(1260)$ coupling decreases with temperature.

Abstract

We consider the light-quark axial-vector current correlator in the framework of thermal QCD sum rules to: (a) find a relation between chiral-symmetry restoration and deconfinement, and (b) determine the temperature behaviour of the $a_1(1260)$ width and coupling. Our results show that deconfinement takes place at a slightly lower temperature than chiral-symmetry restoration.This difference is not significant given the accuracy of the method. The behaviour of the $a_1(1260)$ parameters is consistent with quark-gluon deconfinement, since the width grows and the coupling decreases with increasing temperature.