Thermal hadronization and Hawking–Unruh radiation in QCD

2007/04/30 by P. Castorina, Dmitri E. Kharzeev, D. Kharzeev +1 · 4 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Annihilation #Astronomy #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Color confinement #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Event (particle physics) #Event horizon #Gluon #Hadron #Hadronization #Hawking radiation #Horizon #Micro black hole #Nuclear physics #Particle physics #Physics #Quantum #Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir Effect #Quantum chromodynamics #Quantum electrodynamics #Quantum mechanics #Quantum tunnelling #Quark #Quark–gluon plasma #Unruh effect #hep-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1140/epjc/s10052-007-0368-6

published as Eur.Phys.J.C52:187-201,2007 · 29 pages, 14 figures

arxiv created 2007/06/19 · openalex publication_date 2007/07/26 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

We conjecture that because of color confinement, the physical vacuum forms an event horizon for quarks and gluons which can be crossed only by quantum tunneling, i.e., through the QCD counterpart of Hawking radiation by black holes. Since such radiation cannot transmit information to the outside, it must be thermal, of a temperature determined by the chromodynamic force at the confinement surface, and it must maintain color neutrality. We explore the possibility that the resulting process provides a common mechanism for thermal hadron production in high energy interactions, from e⁺e^- annihilation to heavy ion collisions.

Citations

• PARTICLE PRODUCTION IN HEAVY ION COLLISIONS
• Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?
• Entanglement entropy of the black hole horizon
• Ultraviolet Behavior of Non-Abelian Gauge Theories
• Reliable Perturbative Results for Strong Interactions?
• Particle creation by black holes
• On Gauge Invariance and Vacuum Polarization
• Transition temperature in QCD
• Hawking Radiation as Tunneling
• Vertex functions and infrared fixed point in Landau gauge SU(N) Yang–Mills theory
• Black Holes and Entropy
• The large N limit of superconformal field theories and supergravity

Cited by

• Temperature versus acceleration: the Unruh effect for holographic models
• Strangeness enhancement
• The Unruh effect and oscillating neutrinos
• Causality constraints on hadron production in high energy collisions