The Hot Nonperturbative Gluon Plasma Is an Almost Ideal Colored Liquid

2005/02/28 by A. Peshier, W. Cassing · 5 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Condensed matter physics #Conjecture #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Lattice QCD #Lorentz transformation #Nuclear physics #Particle physics #Physics #Plasma #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions #Quantum chromodynamics #Quantum mechanics #Quark–gluon plasma #Quasiparticle #Superconductivity #hep-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.94.172301

published as Phys.Rev.Lett. 94 (2005) 172301 · 4 pages, 2 eps figures, published version

openalex publication_date 2005/05/06 · arxiv created 2005/05/11 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

We study properties of a gluon plasma above the critical temperature Tc in a generalized quasiparticle approach with a Lorentz spectral function. The model parameters are determined by a fit of the entropy s to lattice QCD data. The effective degrees of freedom are found to be rather heavy and of a sizable width. With the spectral width being closely related to the interaction rate, we find a large effective cross section, which is comparable to the typical distance squared of the quasiparticles. This suggests that the system should be viewed as a liquid as also indicated by an estimate of the plasma parameter Gamma. Furthermore, within the quasiparticle approach we find a very low viscosity to entropy ratio, eta/s approximately 0.2 for T > 1.05 Tc, supporting the recent conjecture of an almost ideal quark-gluon liquid seen at RHIC.

Citations

• Hard-thermal-loop quasiparticle models of deconfined QCD at finite chemical potential
• Open charm and charmonium production at relativistic energies
• Quark mass and flavour dependence of the QCD phase transition
• Toward a theory of binary bound states in the quark-gluon plasma
• Equation of state of deconfined matter within a dynamical quasiparticle description
• From QCD lattice calculations to the equation of state of quark matter
• Suppression of high transverse momentum hadrons at RHIC by (pre-) hadronic final state interactions
• Viscosity in Strongly Interacting Quantum Field Theories from Black Hole Physics

Cited by

• Transport coefficients of strongly interacting quark-gluon plasma including elastic and inelastic scattering within the dynamical quasiparticle model
• Viscosity and thermal relaxation for a resonantly interacting Fermi gas
• Transport coefficients in large Nf gauge theories with massive fermions
• Diffusion coefficient matrix of the strongly interacting quark-gluon plasma
• β-functions for aSU(2)matrix model in2+ϵdimensions