2024/09/25 by Kapusta, Joseph, Pratt, Scott, Singh, Mayank
#FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #Nuclear Theory (nucl-th)
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2409.16518
Anomalous neutral to charged kaon correlations measured by the ALICE collaboration have defied usual explanations. We propose that the large fluctuations could arise because of a disoriented isospin condensate where there is an imbalance between up and down condensates at the time kaons hadronize. This could happen in heavy-ion collisions when the quark condensate re-forms as the system cools and the approximate chiral symmetry of QCD is broken. Within the linear sigma model, we show that the energy cost of forming a disoriented isospin condensate is small making it very plausible.