Quark-Gluon Plasma Freeze-out from a Supercooled State?

1993/12/23 by T. Csörgő, Csorgo, T., L. P. Csernai +1
Physics and Astronomy · #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Nuclear Theory (nucl-th) #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.hep-ph/9312330

openalex publication_date 1993/12/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

We consider time-scales of first-order deconfinement or chiral-symmetry restoring phase transition in high energy heavy ion collisions at RHIC and LHC energies. Recently it was shown that the system must supercool below T_c before the nucleation of hadronic bubbles is sufficiently rapid to overcome the expansion rate. It is shown here that the expected time-scales of high energy heavy ion reactions are sufficiently short to prevent the reheating of the system to near T_c. If quark-gluon plasma is produced in these collisions, it may have to hadronize from a supercooled state and the hadrons produced during rehadronization may freeze-out almost immediately.

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