Spinodal Instabilities of Baryon-Rich Quark-gluon Plasma in the PNJL Model

Using the Polyakov-Nambu-Jona-Lasinia (PNJL) model, we study the spinodal instability of a baryon-rich quark-gluon plasma in the linear response theory. We find that the spinodal unstable region in the temperature and density plane shrinks with increasing wave number of the unstable mode and is also reduced if the effect of Polyakov loop is not included. In the small wave number or long wavelength limit, the spinodal boundaries in both cases of with and without the Polyakov loop coincide with those determined from the isothermal spinodal instability in the thermodynamic approach. Also, the vector interactions among quarks is found to suppress unstable modes of all wave numbers. Moreover, the growth rate of unstable modes initially increases with the wave number but is reduced when the wave number becomes large. Including the collisional effect from quark scattering via the linearized Boltzmann equation, we further find that it decreases the growth rate of unstable modes of all wave numbers. Relevance of these results to relativistic heavy ion collisions is discussed.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figure

Pion flow and antiflow in relativistic heavy-ion collisions

Within the framework of a relativistic transport model (ART) for heavy-ion collisions at AGS energies, we study the transverse flow of pions with respect to that of nucleons using two complementary approaches. It is found that in central collisions pions develop a weak flow as a result of the flow of baryon resonances from which they are produced. On the other hand, they have a weak antiflow in peripheral collisions due to the shadowing of spectators. Furthermore, it is shown that both pion flow and antiflow are dominated by those with large transverse momenta.Comment: Phys. Rev. C, Rapid communication, in press. Figures are available from the authors upon reques

Kaon dispersion relation and flow in relativistic heavy-ion collisions

Within the framework of a relativistic transport model (ART) for heavy-ion collisions at AGS energies, we examine the effects of kaon dispersion relation on the transverse flow of kaons and their transverse momentum and azimuthal angle distributions. We find that the transverse flow is the most sensitive observable for studying the kaon dispersion relation in dense medium.Comment: 7 pages, latex, 3 figures available upon request from the authors, Phys. Rev. C (1996) in pres

Revealing Tripartite Quantum Discord with Tripartite Information Diagram

A new measure based on the tripartite information diagram is proposed for identifying quantum discord in tripartite systems. The proposed measure generalizes the mutual information underlying discord from bipartite to tripartite systems, and utilizes both one-particle and two-particle projective measurements to reveal the characteristics of the tripartite quantum discord. The feasibility of the proposed measure is demonstrated by evaluating the tripartite quantum discord for systems with states close to Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger, W, and biseparable states. In addition, the connections between tripartite quantum discord and two other quantum correlations---namely genuine tripartite entanglement and genuine tripartite Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen steering---are briefly discussed. The present study considers the case of quantum discord in tripartite systems. However, the proposed framework can be readily extended to general N-partite systems

Elliptic flow splitting as a probe of the QCD phase structure at finite baryon chemical potential

Using a partonic transport model based on the 3-flavor Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model and a relativistic hadronic transport model to describe, respectively, the evolution of the initial partonic and the final hadronic phase of heavy-ion collisions at energies carried out in the Beam-Energy Scan program of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, we have studied the effects of both the partonic and hadronic mean-field potentials on the elliptic flow of particles relative to that of their antiparticles. We find that to reproduce the measured relative elliptic flow differences between nucleons and antinucleons as well as between kaons and antikaons requires a vector coupling constant as large as 0.5 to 1.1 times the scalar coupling constant in the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model. Implications of our results in understanding the QCD phase structure at finite baryon chemical potential are discussed.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, discussions added, version accepted by Phys. Rev. Let