Quarkonium states in an anisotropic QCD plasma

We consider quarkonium in a hot QCD plasma which, due to expansion and non-zero viscosity, exhibits a local anisotropy in momentum space. At short distances the heavy-quark potential is known at tree level from the hard-thermal loop resummed gluon propagator in anisotropic perturbative QCD. The potential at long distances is modeled as a QCD string which is screened at the same scale as the Coulomb field. At asymptotic separation the potential energy is non-zero and inversely proportional to the temperature. We obtain numerical solutions of the three-dimensional Schroedinger equation for this potential. We find that quarkonium binding is stronger at non-vanishing viscosity and expansion rate, and that the anisotropy leads to polarization of the P-wave states.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures, final version, to appear in PR

Dissipation near the QCD phase transition

We set up a framework for field theoretical studies of systems out of thermal equilibrium and zoom in on the dissipation of disoriented chiral condensates. Short relaxation times are obtained in the phase transition region, jeopardizing the definiteness of a DCC signal.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, espcrc.sty, to be published in the proceedings PANIC02, Osaka, Japan, September 30 - October 4, 200

Can quarkonia survive deconfinement ?

We study quarkonium correlators and spectral functions at zero and finite temperature in QCD with only heavy quarks using potential models combined with perturbative QCD. First, we show that this approach can describe the quarkonium correlation function at zero temperature. Using a class of screened potentials based on lattice calculations of the static quark-antiquark free energy we calculate spectral functions at finite temperature. We find that all quarkonium states, with the exception of the $1S$ bottomonium, dissolve in the deconfined phase at temperatures smaller than $1.5T_c$, in contradiction with the conclusions of recent studies. Despite this the temperature dependence of the quarkonium correlation functions calculated on the lattice is well reproduced in our model. We also find that even in the absence of resonances the spectral function at high temperatures is significantly enhanced over the spectral function corresponding to free quark antiquark propagation.Comment: Version accepted in Phys. Rev. D, 20 pages, 25 figure

Quarkonia Correlators Above Deconfinement

We study the quarkonia correlators above deconfinement using the potential model with screened temperature-dependent potentials. We find that while the qualitative features of the spectral functions, such as the survival of the 1S state, can be reproduced by potential models, the temperature dependence of the correlators disagree with the recent lattice data.Comment: 21 pages, 26 eps figure

S-Wave Quarkonia in Potential Models

We discuss S-wave quarkonia correlators and spectral function using the Wong-potential, and show that these do not agree with the lattice results.Comment: based on talk presented at Strangeness in Quark Matter, UCLA, March 26-31, 200

Analyzing the Power Spectrum of the Little Bangs

In this talk we discuss the analogy between data from heavy-ion collisions and the Cosmic Microwave Background. We identify p_T correlations data as the heavy-ion analogy to the CMB and extract a power-spectrum from the heavy-ion data. We define the ratio of the final state power-spectrum to the initial coordinate-space eccentricity as the transfer-function. From the transfer-function we find that higher $n$ terms are suppressed and we argue that the suppression provides information on length scales like the mean-free-path. We make a rough estimate of the mean-free-path and find that it is larger than estimates based on the centrality dependence of v_2.Comment: 4 pages, talk given at Hard Probes 2010, Eilat, Israe

Detecting a First-Order Transition in the QCD Phase Diagram with Baryon-Baryon Correlations

We suggest baryon-baryon correlations as an experimentally accessible signature for a first-order phase transition between a baryon-rich phase, like quarkyonic, and a baryon-suppressed hadronic phase in the QCD phase diagram. We examine the consequences of baryon-rich bubble formation in an expanding medium and show how the two-particle correlations vary in the transverse and longitudinal direction depending on the strength of the radial flow, the bubble temperature, and the time when the baryons are emitted.Comment: Revised published version, 6 pages in PL

Confinement and Chiral Symmetry

We illustrate why color deconfines when chiral symmetry is restored in gauge theories with quarks in the fundamental representation, and while these transitions do not need to coincide when quarks are in the adjoint representation, entanglement between them is still present.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, proceedings of Quark Matter 200

Critical Behavior of Non Order-Parameter Fields

We show that all of the relevant features of a phase transition can be determined using a non order parameter field which is a physical state of the theory. This fact allows us to understand the deconfining transition of the pure Yang-Mills theory via the physical excitations rather than using the Polyakov loop.Comment: RevTeX, 4-pages, 1 figur