Bubble dynamics in a strong first-order quark-hadron transition * *Supported in part by National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (11675048)

Shuying Zhou,Hong Mao,Song Shu

doi:10.1088/1674-1137/abdea7

Abstract

We investigate the dynamics of a strong first-order quark-hadron transition driven by cubic interactions via homogeneous bubble nucleation in the Friedberg-Lee model. The one-loop effective thermodynamic potential of the model and the critical bubble profiles have been calculated at different temperatures and chemical potentials. By taking the temperature and the chemical potential as variables, the evolutions of the surface tension, the typical radius of the critical bubble, and the shift in the coarse-grained free energy in the presence of a nucleation bubble are obtained, and the limit on the reliability of the thin-wall approximation is also addressed accordingly. Our results are compared to those obtained for a weak first-order quark-hadron phase transition; in particular, the spinodal decomposition is relevant.

Highlights

At sufficiently high temperatures and densities, one expects that normal nuclear matter undergoes a phase transition to quark-gluon plasma (QGP), where quarks and gluons become deconfined and essentially chiral
Quantum chromodynamics (QCD) as a theory of strong interaction is applicable to determine the properties of strongly interacting matter at high temperatures and densities, because of the phenomenon of asymptotic freedom, the nature of the quark-hadron phase transition remains an open question, especially when quark chemical potentials are involved in the practical calculations[2]
In the present paper we have investigated a dynamics of a strong first-order phase transition via homogeneous bubble nucleation within the Friedberg-Lee model at finite temperatures and chemical potentials

Summary

INTRODUCTION

At sufficiently high temperatures and densities, one expects that normal nuclear matter undergoes a phase transition to quark-gluon plasma (QGP), where quarks and gluons become deconfined and essentially chiral. The remedy to this problem is to introduce the Polyakov loop in the models, and the results in Ref.[41] show that the PQM model gives a prediction of a crossover in the low-density region and a weakly first-order phase transition in the high-density region Most of these previous studies focus on the thermodynamic effective potential, the properties of isolated hadrons in thermal medium and the phase diagram, while our current study will concentrate on the dynamics of a strong first-order phase transition via bubble nucleation.

MODEL FORMULATION

HOMOGENEOUS THERMAL NUCLEATION

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

SUMMARY