Deconfinement Phase Transition Research Articles

Quark-quark interaction and quark matter in neutron stars

Hyperon ($Y$) mixing in neutron-star matter brings about a remarkable softening of the equation of state (EoS) and the maximum mass is reduced to a value far less than $2M_{\odot}$. One idea to avoid this "hyperon puzzle in neutron stars" is to assume that the many-body repulsions work universally for every kind of baryons. The other is to take into account the quark deconfinement phase transitions from a hadronic EoS to a sufficiently stiff quark-matter EoS. In the present approach, both effects are handled in a common framework. As well as the hadronic matter, the quark matter with the two-body quark-quark interactions are treated within the Brueckner-Bethe-Goldstone theory beyond the mean field frameworks, where interaction parameters are based on the terrestrial data. The derived mass-radius relations of neutron stars show that maximum masses reach over $2M_{\odot}$ even in the cases of including hadron-quark phase transitions, being consistent with the recent observations for maximum masses and radii of neutron stars by the NICER measurements and the other multimessenger data.

Analytical solution of surface tension of quark-hadron phase transition

By using the finite temperature field theory, the one-loop effective potential and the dynamics of the quantum chromodynamics deconfinement phase transition in the framework of Friedberg-Lee model are studied at finite temperature and density. Our results show that there is a first-order deconfinement phase transition for the full phase diagram, and the critical temperature is about 119.8 MeV for a zero chemical potential whereas the critical chemical is around 256.4 MeV when the temperature is fixed at <i>T</i> = 50 MeV. Moreover, in the thin-wall approximation, we investigate the dynamics of a strong first-order quark-hadron transition via homogeneous bubble nucleation in the Friedberg-Lee model. Under an appropriate boundary condition, the equation of motion for the <inline-formula><tex-math id="M3">\begin{document}$ \sigma $\end{document}</tex-math><alternatives><graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="21-20220659_M3.jpg"/><graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="21-20220659_M3.png"/></alternatives></inline-formula> field is solved, then the evolutions of the bubble critical configuration with radius <inline-formula><tex-math id="M4">\begin{document}$ r $\end{document}</tex-math><alternatives><graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="21-20220659_M4.jpg"/><graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="21-20220659_M4.png"/></alternatives></inline-formula> at different temperatures and densities are calculated. The surface tension, the typical radius of the critical bubble and the shift in the coarse-grained free energy each as a function of temperature and chemical potential are obtained. In order to gain the reliability and advantages of the thin-wall approximation, our analytical results based on the thin-wall approximation are compared with those obtained by the exact numerical method accordingly. Finally, some consequences and possible applications of our results in the quark meson model and Polyakov quark meson model are also presented in the end of this paper.

Exploring the Phase Diagram of V-QCD with Neutron Star Merger Simulations

Determining the phase structure of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) and its Equation of State (EOS) at densities and temperatures realized inside neutron stars and their mergers is a long-standing open problem. The holographic V-QCD framework provides a model for the EOS of dense and hot QCD, which describes the deconfinement phase transition between a dense baryonic and a quark matter phase. We use this model in fully general relativistic hydrodynamic (GRHD) simulations to study the formation of quark matter and the emitted gravitational wave signal of binary systems that are similar to the first ever observed neutron star merger event GW170817.

NICER view on holographic QCD

The holographic models for dense QCD matter work surprisingly well. A general implication seems that the deconfinement phase transition dictates the maximum mass of neutron stars. The nuclear matter phase turns out to be rather stiff which, if continuously merged with nuclear matter models based on effective field theories, leads to the conclusion that neutron stars do not have quark matter cores in the light of all current astrophysical data. We comment that as the perturbative QCD results are in stark contrast with strong coupling results, any future simulations of neutron star mergers incorporating corrections beyond ideal fluid should proceed cautiously. For this purpose, we provide a model which treats nuclear and quark matter phases in a unified framework at strong coupling.

Gauge Equivariant Neural Networks for Quantum Lattice Gauge Theories.

Gauge symmetries play a key role in physics appearing in areas such as quantum field theories of the fundamental particles and emergent degrees of freedom in quantum materials. Motivated by the desire to efficiently simulate many-body quantum systems with exact local gauge invariance, gauge equivariant neural-network quantum states are introduced, which exactly satisfy the local Hilbert space constraints necessary for the description of quantum lattice gauge theory with Z_{d} gauge group and non-Abelian Kitaev D(G) models on different geometries. Focusing on the special case of Z_{2} gauge group on a periodically identified square lattice, the equivariant architecture is analytically shown to contain the loop-gas solution as a special case. Gauge equivariant neural-network quantum states are used in combination with variational quantum MonteCarlo to obtain compact descriptions of the ground state wave function for the Z_{2} theory away from the exactly solvable limit, and to demonstrate the confining or deconfining phase transition of the Wilson loop order parameter.

Hadron-quark Pasta Phase in Massive Neutron Stars

Abstract The structured hadron-quark mixed phase, known as the pasta phase, is expected to appear in the core of massive neutron stars. Motivated by the recent advances in astrophysical observations, we explore the possibility of the appearance of quarks inside neutron stars and check its compatibility with current constraints. We investigate the properties of the hadron-quark pasta phases and their influences on the equation of state (EOS) for neutron stars. In this work, we extend the energy minimization (EM) method to describe the hadron-quark pasta phase, where the surface and Coulomb contributions are included in the minimization procedure. By allowing different electron densities in the hadronic and quark matter phases, the total electron chemical potential with the electric potential remains constant, and local β equilibrium is achieved inside the Wigner–Seitz cell. The mixed phase described in the EM method shows the features lying between the Gibbs and Maxwell constructions, which is helpful for understanding the transition from the Gibbs construction to the Maxwell construction with increasing surface tension. We employ the relativistic mean-field model to describe the hadronic matter, while the quark matter is described by the MIT bag model with vector interactions. It is found that the vector interactions among quarks can significantly stiffen the EOS at high densities and help enhance the maximum mass of neutron stars. Other parameters like the bag constant can also affect the deconfinement phase transition in neutron stars. Our results show that hadron-quark pasta phases may appear in the core of massive neutron stars that can be compatible with current observational constraints.

The Effect of Charge, Isospin, and Strangeness in the QCD Phase Diagram Critical End Point

In this work, we discuss the deconfinement phase transition to quark matter in hot/dense matter. We examine the effect that different charge fractions, isospin fractions, net strangeness, and chemical equilibrium with respect to leptons have on the position of the coexistence line between different phases. In particular, we investigate how different sets of conditions that describe matter in neutron stars and their mergers, or matter created in heavy-ion collisions affect the position of the critical end point, namely where the first-order phase transition becomes a crossover. We also present an introduction to the topic of critical points, including a review of recent advances concerning QCD critical points.

Signatures of deconfined quark phases in binary neutron star mergers

We investigate the quark deconfinement phase transition in the context of binary neutron star (BNS) mergers. We treat hadronic matter using a Brueckner-Hartree-Fock quantum many-body approach and modern two-body and three-body nuclear interactions derived within chiral effective field theory. Quark matter is modeled using an extended version of the bag model. We combine these approaches to construct a new finite-temperature composition-dependent equation of state (EOS) with a first-order phase transition between hadrons and deconfined quarks. We perform numerical relativity simulations of BNS mergers with this new EOS and compare results obtained with or without the deconfinment phase transition. We find that deconfined quark production in a neutron star merger results from matter crossing the phase boundary over a wide range of temperatures and densities. The softening of the EOS due to the phase transition causes the merger remnants to be more compact and to collapse to a black hole at earlier times. The phase transition is imprinted on the postmerger gravitational wave (GW) signal duration, amplitude, and peak frequency. However, this imprint is only detectable for binaries with sufficiently long-lived remnants. Moreover, the phase transition does not result in significant deviations from quasiuniversal relations for the postmerger GW peak frequency. Consequently, the postmerger GW peak frequency alone is not sufficient to conclusively exclude or confirm the presence of a phase transition in a BNS merger. We also study the impact of the phase transition on dynamical ejecta, remnant accretion disk masses, $r$-process nucleosynthetic yields and associated electromagnetic counterparts. While there are differences in the electromagnetic counterparts and nucleosynthesis yields between the purely hadronic models and the models with phase transitions, these can be primarily ascribed to the difference in remnant collapse time between the two, so they are degenerate with other effects. An exception is the nonthermal afterglow caused by the interaction of the fastest component of the dynamical ejecta and the interstellar medium, which is systematically boosted in the binaries with phase transition as a consequence of the more violent merger they experience.

Flux tubes in full QCD at high temperature

Chromoelectric and chromomagnetic field and energy density distributions produced by a quark-antiquark pair have been investigated in the presence of dynamical fermions in the close vicinity to the deconfinement phase transition. In our lattice simulation we have used highly improved staggered quark action and tree level improved Symanzik gauge (HISQ/tree) action on the lattices of two different sizes, exploiting the Gradient flow method for noise reduction. We find that, in full QCD with dynamical quarks, the dynamical fermions widen the flux tube in a short separation range of about R = 1 fm, after which an hadronization takes place due to the suppression by the dynamical fermions. Energy density and width of the flux tube vanish at about R = 1.8 fm and R = 1.5 fm, respectively, at all temperatures. The present results also suggest that the flux tube structure still persists in the deconfined phase and it melts gradually after certain temperature value is reached above the critical temperature.

Deconfinement phase transition in the SU(3) instanton-dyon ensemble

Confinement remains one the most interesting and challenging nonperturbative phenomenon in non-Abelian gauge theories. Recent semiclassical [for $SU(2)$] and lattice (for QCD) studies have suggested that confinement arises from interactions of statistical ensembles of instanton dyons with the Polyakov loop. We extend studies of a semiclassical ensemble of dyons to the $SU(3)$ Yang-Mills theory. We find that such interactions do generate the expected first-order deconfinement phase transition. The properties of the ensemble, including correlations and topological susceptibility, are studied over a range of temperatures above and below ${T}_{c}$. Additionally, the dyon ensemble is studied in the Yang-Mills theory containing an extra trace-deformation term. It is shown that such a term can cause the theory to remain confined and even retain the same topological observables at high temperatures.

Three-dimensional Yang-Mills-Chern-Simons theory from a D3-brane background with D-instantons

By constructing the configuration of D3-branes with D(-1)-branes as D-instantons, we study the three-dimensional Yang-Mills Chern-Simons theory in holography. Due to the presence of the D-instantons, the D7-branes with discrepant embedding functions are able to be introduced in order to include the fundamental fermions (as flavors) and the Chern-Simons term (at very low energy) in the dual theory. The vacuum structure at zero temperature is studied in the soliton background and it illustrates the topological phase transition in the presence of instantons. Moreover, since the confinement/deconfinement phase transition could be holographically identified as the Hawking-Page transition in the bulk, we accordingly calculate the critical temperature of the deconfinement phase transition by collecting the bulk onshell action as the thermodynamical free energy. On the other hand, we evaluate the difference of the entanglement entropy in slab configuration by using the RT formula since the confinement may also be characterized by the entanglement entropy. Altogether we find the behavior of the critical temperature is in qualitative agreement with the behavior of the critical length determined by the entanglement entropy which implies the entanglement entropy could indeed be a character of the confinement in our setup and the D3-D(-1) system would be a remarkable approach to study the three-dimensional gauge theory.

Infrared propagators of Yang-Mills-Chern-Simons theories in linear covariant gauges

Recent works have explored nonperturbative effects due to the existence of (infinitesimal) Gribov copies in Yang-Mills-Chern-Simons theories in three Euclidean dimensions. In particular, the removal of such copies modify the gauge field propagator by a self-consistent dynamically generated mass parameter, the Gribov parameter. Due to the interplay with the topological mass introduced by the Chern-Simons term, the propagator features a nontrivial set of phases with poles of different nature, leading to the possible interpretation of a confinfing to deconfining phase transition. Here, we restore the Becchi--Rouet--Stora--Tyutin (BRST) symmetry which is softly broken by the elimination of gauge copies and provide a BRST-invariant discussion of such a transition. In order to make clear all physical statements, we deal with linear covariant gauges which contain a gauge parameter and therefore allow for an explicit check of gauge parameter independence of physical results. We also discuss the generation of condensates due to the infrared relevance of infinitesimal Gribov copies.

Testing the dark SU(N) Yang-Mills theory confined landscape: From the lattice to gravitational waves

We pave the way for future gravitational-wave detection experiments, such as the big bang observer and DECIGO, to constraint dark sectors made of $SU(N)$ Yang-Mills confined theories. We go beyond the state-of-the-art by combining first principle lattice results and effective field theory approaches to infer essential information about the nonperturbative dark deconfinement phase transition driving the generation of gravitational-waves in the early Universe, such as the order, duration and energy budget of the phase transition which are essential in establishing the strength of the resulting gravitational-wave signal.

Multiplicity dependencies of midrapidity transverse momentum spectra of identified charged particles in p+p collisions at (s)1/2 = 13 TeV at LHC

Multiplicity dependencies of midrapidity [Formula: see text] spectra of identified charged particles in inelastic [Formula: see text] collisions at [Formula: see text] TeV at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), measured by ALICE Collaboration, have been analyzed. The combined minimum [Formula: see text] fits with thermodynamically consistent Tsallis function as well as Hagedorn function with the embedded transverse flow describe quite satisfactorily the [Formula: see text] spectra of particles in the studied 10 different classes of charged-particle multiplicity in inelastic [Formula: see text] collisions at [Formula: see text] TeV. The obtained effective temperatures [Formula: see text] of thermodynamically consistent Tsallis function demonstrate a consistent growth with an increase in multiplicity of charged particles in inelastic [Formula: see text] collisions at [Formula: see text] TeV, and the corresponding [Formula: see text] versus the average charged-particle (pseudorapidity) multiplicity density [Formula: see text] dependence is described very well by the simple power function with exponent parameter [Formula: see text] (1/3) in the whole analyzed range [Formula: see text]. It is found that the transverse (radial) flow becomes significant at higher multiplicity events in [Formula: see text] collisions at [Formula: see text] TeV, reaching the maximum value [Formula: see text] at the largest studied multiplicity density [Formula: see text]. It is estimated from analysis of [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] versus [Formula: see text] dependencies, obtained using Hagedorn function with the embedded transverse flow, that the probable onset of deconfinement phase transition in inelastic [Formula: see text] collisions at [Formula: see text] TeV occurs at [Formula: see text].

Gluodynamics and deconfinement phase transition under rotation from holography

We investigate rotating effect on deconfinement phase transition in an Einstein-Maxwell-Dilaton (EMD) model in bottom-up holographic QCD approach. By constructing a rotating black hole, which is supposed to be dual to rotating strongly coupled nuclear matter, we investigate the thermodynamic quantities, including entropy density, pressure, energy density, trace anomaly, sound speed and specific heat for both pure gluon system and two-flavor system under rotation. It is shown that those thermodynamic quantities would be enhanced by large angular velocity. Also, we extract the information of phase transition from those thermodynamic quantities, as well as the order parameter of deconfinement phase transition, i.e. the loop operators. It is shown that, in the T − ω plane, for two-flavor case with small chemical potential, the phase transition is always crossover. The transition temperature decreases slowly with angular velocity and chemical potential. For pure gluon system with zero chemical potential, the phase transition is always first order, while at finite chemical potential a critical end point (CEP) will present in the T − ω plane.

Non-Wilson-Fisher kinks of $O(N)$ numerical bootstrap: from the deconfined phase transition to a putative new family of CFTs

It is well established that the O(N)O(N) Wilson-Fisher (WF) CFT sits at a kink of the numerical bounds from bootstrapping four point function of O(N)O(N) vector. Moving away from the WF kinks, there indeed exists another family of kinks (dubbed non-WF kinks) on the curve of O(N)O(N) numerical bounds. Different from the O(N)O(N) WF kinks that exist for arbitary NN in 2<d<42<d<4 dimensions, the non-WF kinks exist in arbitrary dimensions but only for a large enough N>N_c(d)N>Nc(d) in a given dimension dd. In this paper we have achieved a thorough understanding for few special cases of these non-WF kinks, which already hints interesting physics. The first case is the O(4)O(4) bootstrap in 2d, where the non-WF kink turns out to be the SU(2)_1SU(2)1 Wess-Zumino-Witten (WZW) model, and all the SU(2)_{k>2}SU(2)k>2 WZW models saturate the numerical bound on the left side of the kink. This is a mirror version of the Z_2Z2 bootstrap, where the 2d Ising CFT sits at a kink while all the other minimal models saturating the bound on the right. We further carry out dimensional continuation of the 2d SU(2)_1SU(2)1 kink towards the 3d SO(5)SO(5) deconfined phase transition. We find the kink disappears at around d=2.7d=2.7 dimensions indicating the SO(5)SO(5) deconfined phase transition is weakly first order. The second interesting observation is, the O(2)O(2) bootstrap bound does not show any kink in 2d (N_c=2Nc=2), but is surprisingly saturated by the 2d free boson CFT (also called Luttinger liquid) all the way on the numerical curve. The last case is the N=\inftyN=∞ limit, where the non-WF kink sits at (\Delta_\phi, \Delta_T)=(d-1, 2d)(Δϕ,ΔT)=(d−1,2d) in dd dimensions. We manage to write down its analytical four point function in arbitrary dimensions, which equals to the subtraction of correlation functions of a free fermion theory and generalized free theory. An important feature of this solution is the existence of a full tower of conserved higher spin current. We speculate that a new family of CFTs will emerge at non-WF kinks for finite NN, in a similar fashion as O(N)O(N) WF CFTs originating from free boson at N=\inftyN=∞.

Fluctuations of the order parameter in an SU(Nc) effective model

We investigate features of the deconfinement phase transition in an $SU({N}_{c})$ gauge theory as revealed by fluctuations of the order parameter. The tool of choice is an effective model built from one-loop expressions of the field determinants of gluon and ghost, in the presence of a Polyakov loop background field. We show that the curvature masses associated with the Cartan angles, which serve as a proxy to study the ${A}_{0}$-gluon screening mass, show a characteristic dip in the vicinity of the transition temperature. The strength of the observables, which reflects a competition between the confining and the deconfining forces, is sensitive to assumptions of dynamics, and thus provides an interesting link between the $Z({N}_{c})$ vacuum structure and the properties of gluon and ghost propagators.

Sound velocity in dense stellar matter with strangeness and compact stars * *Supported by National SKA Program of China (2020SKA0120300), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (11873040), the Youth Innovation Fund of Xiamen (3502Z20206061), Ningbo Natural Science Foundation (2019A610066), CAS “Light of West China” Program (2018-XBQNXZ-B-025) and Tianshan Youth Program (2018Q039)

The phase state of dense matter in the intermediate density range ( 1-10 times the nuclear saturation density) is both intriguing and unclear and can have important observable effects in the present gravitational wave era of neutron stars. As matter density increases in compact stars, the sound velocity is expected to approach the conformal limit ( ) at high densities and should also fulfill the causality limit ( ). However, its detailed behavior remains a prominent topic of debate. It was suggested that the sound velocity of dense matter could be an important indicator of a deconfinement phase transition, where a particular shape might be expected for its density dependence. In this work, we explore the general properties of the sound velocity and the adiabatic index of dense matter in hybrid stars as well as in neutron stars and quark stars. Various conditions are employed for the hadron-quark phase transition with varying interface tension. We find that the expected behavior of the sound velocity can also be achieved by the nonperturbative properties of the quark phase, in addition to a deconfinement phase transition. Moreover, it leads to a more compact star with a similar mass. We then propose a new class of quark star equation of states, which can be tested by future high-precision radius measurements of pulsar-like objects.

Topological or rotational non-Abelian gauge fields from Einstein-Skyrme holography

We report analytically known states at non-zero temperature which may serve as a powerful tool to reveal common topological and thermodynamic properties of systems ranging from the QCD phase diagram to topological phase transitions in condensed matter materials. In the holographically dual gravity theory, these are analytic solutions to a five-dimensional non-linear-sigma (Skyrme) model dynamically coupled to Einstein gravity. This theory is shown to be holographically dual to mathcal{N} = 4 Super-Yang-Mills theory coupled to an SU(2)-current. All solutions are fully backreacted asymptotically Anti-de Sitter (AdS) black branes or holes. One family of global AdS black hole solutions contains non-Abelian gauge field configurations with positive integer Chern numbers and finite energy density. Larger Chern numbers increase the Hawking-Page transition temperature. In the holographically dual field theory this indicates a significant effect on the deconfinement phase transition. Black holes with one Hawking temperature can have distinct Chern numbers, potentially enabling topological transitions. A second family of analytic solutions, rotating black branes, is also provided. These rotating solutions induce states with propagating charge density waves in the dual field theory. We compute the Hawking temperature, entropy density, angular velocity and free energy for these black holes/branes. These correspond to thermodynamic data in the dual field theory. For these states the energy-momentum tensor, (non-)conserved current, and topological charge are interpreted.

Hadron-quark mixed phase in the quark-meson coupling model

We explore the possibility of a structured hadron-quark mixed phase forming in the interior of neutron stars. The quark-meson coupling (QMC) model, which explicitly incorporates the internal quark structure of the nucleon, is employed to describe the hadronic phase, while the quark phase is described by the same bag model as the one used in the QMC framework, so as to keep consistency between the two coexisting phases. We analyze the effect of the appearance of hadron-quark pasta phases on the neutron-star properties. We also discuss the influence of nuclear symmetry energy and the bag constant $B$ in quark matter on the deconfinement phase transition. For the treatment of the hadron-quark mixed phase, we use the energy minimization method and compare it with the Gibbs construction. The finite-size effects like surface and Coulomb energies are taken into account in the energy minimization method; they play crucial roles in determining the pasta configuration during the hadron-quark phase transition. It is found that the finite-size effects can significantly reduce the region of the mixed phase relative to that of the Gibbs construction. Using a consistent value of $B$ in the QMC model and quark matter, we find that hadron-quark pasta phases are formed in the interior of massive stars, but no pure quark matter can exist.