Extreme softening of QCD phase transition under weak acceleration: first principle Monte Carlo results for gluon plasma

TL;DR

This study uses first-principle Monte Carlo simulations to show that weak acceleration significantly softens the QCD phase transition in gluon plasma, transforming it from a first-order transition to a crossover.

Contribution

It demonstrates, through numerical simulations, that even weak acceleration can drastically alter the nature of the QCD phase transition in gluon plasma.

Findings

Weak acceleration softens the deconfinement transition.

Transition changes from first-order to crossover under acceleration.

Acceleration may obscure signals of phase transition in early Universe or heavy ion collisions.

Abstract

We study the properties of gluon plasma subjected to a weak acceleration using first-principle numerical Monte Carlo simulations. We use the Luttinger (Tolman-Ehrenfest) correspondence between temperature gradient and gravitational field to impose acceleration in imaginary time formalism. Under acceleration, the system resides in global thermal equilibrium. Our results indicate that even the weakest acceleration up to $a \simeq 16$ MeV drastically softens the deconfinement phase transition, converting the first-order phase transition of a static system to a soft crossover for accelerating gluons. The accelerating environment can be relevant to the first moments of the early Universe and the initial glasma regime of relativistic heavy ion collisions. In particular, our results imply that the acceleration, if present, may also inhibit the detection of the thermodynamic phase transition from quark-gluon plasma to the hadronic phase.