2002/07/31 by M. Ladrem, Ladrem, M., A. Ait-El-Djoudi +3
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Statistical Mechanics and Entropy #Theoretical and Computational Physics #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.hep-ph/0207367
11 pages, 6 Postscript figures; talk given at the XVIth Quark Matter conference on Ultrarelativistic Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions, held in Nantes-France from 18 to 24 July 2002
openalex publication_date 2002/07/31 · arxiv created 2002/08/04 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We study the finite-size effects on the deconfinement phase transition (DPT) of hot and / or dense hadronic matter, using a simple thermodynamic model based on the assumption of coexistence of confined and deconfined phases in a finite volume, with the two-phases matter Equations of State. For the QGP, we consider a partition function (PF) with the exact color-singletness requirement. A problem arises in the limit of small QGP volumes when using the usual color-singlet partition function (CSPF) derived in the saddle point approximation. To avoid the problem, we have then proposed a method for calculating a suitable CSPF, which allows us to accurately calculate physical quantities describing well the DPT at finite volumes. We show that in the limit of infinite volume, these thermodynamic quantities exhibit a discontinuity at a critical point Tc(infinity) (or muc(infinity)). In a finite size system, all singularities are smoothed out over a broadened critical region, shifted from the critical point position in the thermodynamic limit. The first derivatives of these thermodynamic quantities show delta function singularities at the critical point in the thermodynamic limit, while in a finite volume, these delta singularities are smeared into finite peaks of widths deltaT(V) (or deltamu(V)), with the maxima of the peaks occuring at pseudo-critical points Tc(V) (or muc(V)). An analysis of the finite size scaling behavior at criticality of these maxima as well as of the width of the transition region and the shift of the critical point allows us to determine the critical exponents characterizing the DPT. Our results are in good agreement with those predicted by other studies for a first-order phase transition.