Disoriented isospin condensates in heavy-ion collisions

TL;DR

This paper proposes that anomalous neutral to charged kaon correlations in heavy-ion collisions may be explained by disoriented isospin condensates formed during the cooling and chiral symmetry breaking phase, which are energetically plausible.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of disoriented isospin condensates as an explanation for anomalous kaon correlations, supported by linear sigma model calculations.

Findings

Disoriented isospin condensates can form with low energy cost.

Such condensates could cause large fluctuations in kaon charge ratios.

The model aligns with observed anomalies in heavy-ion collision data.

Abstract

Anomalous neutral to charged kaon correlations measured by the ALICE collaboration have defied usual explanations. We propose that the large fluctuations could arise because of a disoriented isospin condensate where there is an imbalance between up and down condensates at the time kaons hadronize. This could happen in heavy-ion collisions when the quark condensate re-forms as the system cools and the approximate chiral symmetry of QCD is broken. Within the linear sigma model, we show that the energy cost of forming a disoriented isospin condensate is small making it very plausible.