Light front approach to hot and dense quark matter

Abstract

In recent years we have extended light‐front quantization to systems of finite temperature and density, hence providing a novel approach towards nuclear matter under extreme conditions. Light‐front field theory is particularly suited, since boost invariance is essential, e.g., for a fireball created in a heavy ion collision. The approach is based on a relativistic Hamiltonian and allows us to treat the perturbative as well as the non‐perturbative regime of QCD. Presently, we are in particular interested in few‐quark correlations, i.e. quark‐antiquark and three‐quark correlations. The later ones have hardly been considered in this context, although they should be important as quark matter hadronizes below the critical temperature of the chiral phase transition to form nucleons. To this end we have derived relativistic Faddeev type in‐medium equations and investigated the stability of three‐quark bound states (nucleons) in hot and dense quark matter. We have used an effective zero‐range interaction, and compared our results with the more traditional instant form approach, where applicable.