Interacting color strings as the origin of the liquid behavior of the quark-gluon plasma

TL;DR

This paper investigates how interactions among color strings in hadronic collisions can lead to the liquid-like behavior of the quark-gluon plasma, by analyzing the distribution functions and core overlaps of the strings.

Contribution

It introduces a model with concentric cores and core overlaps for color strings, explaining the liquid behavior of quark-gluon plasma near the phase transition.

Findings

Systems show small differences between gas-liquid and confined-deconfined phase transition temperatures.

The model reproduces the experimentally observed liquid behavior of quark-gluon plasma.

Core-core interactions are crucial for the liquid phase formation.

Abstract

We study the radial distribution function of the color sources (strings) formed in hadronic collisions and the requirements to obtain a liquid. As a repulsive interaction is needed, we incorporate a concentric core in the strings as well as the probability that a string allows core-core overlaps. We find systems where the difference between the gas-liquid and confined-deconfined phase transition temperatures is small. This explains the experimentally observed liquid behavior of the quark-gluon plasma above the confined-deconfined transition temperature.