Schwinger tunneling and thermal character of hadron spectra

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that the oscillatory solutions of collisionless kinetic equations in strong color fields produce thermal-like transverse-momentum spectra of quarks and gluons, with an enhancement at very soft momenta.

Contribution

It reveals that oscillatory behavior in kinetic equations explains the thermal spectra and soft enhancement in hadron production from quark-gluon plasma.

Findings

Thermal-like spectra arise from oscillatory solutions in kinetic equations.

Enhanced production occurs at very soft transverse momenta (<100 MeV).

Spectral features are explained by underlying quantum field dynamics.

Abstract

It is shown that an oscillatory character of the solutions of the collisionless kinetic equations describing production of the quark-gluon plasma in strong color fields leads to the exponential (thermal-like) transverse-momentum spectra of partons produced in the soft region (100 MeV < pt < 1 GeV). In addition, the production of partons in the very soft region (pt < 100 MeV) is clearly enhanced above the thermal-like background.