Hard-core deconfinement and soft-surface delocalization from nuclear to quark matter

TL;DR

This paper distinguishes between hard and soft deconfinement in nuclear to quark matter transitions, linking high-density core overlap with experimental data and introducing quantum percolation as a soft deconfinement mechanism.

Contribution

It introduces a conceptual framework differentiating hard and soft deconfinement, connecting core overlap physics with quantum percolation at lower densities.

Findings

Hard core overlap aligns with neutron star data.

Quantum percolation offers a soft deconfinement scenario.

Equation of state from baryon cores matches empirical observations.

Abstract

We propose a conceptual distinction between hard and soft realizations of deconfinement from nuclear to quark matter. In the high density region of Hard Deconfinement the repulsive hard cores of baryons overlap each other and bulk thermodynamics is dominated by the core properties that can be experimentally accessed in high-energy scattering experiments. We find that the equation of state estimated from a single baryon core is fairly consistent with those empirically known from neutron star phenomenology. We next discuss a novel concept of Soft Deconfinement, characterized by quantum percolation of quark wave-functions, at densities lower than the threshold for Hard Deconfinement. We make a brief review of quantum percolation in the context of nuclear and quark matter and illustrate a possible scenario of quark deconfinement at high baryon densities.