Plasmons, plasminos and Landau damping in a quasiparticle model of the quark-gluon plasma

A phenomenological quasiparticle model is surveyed for 2+1 quark flavors and compared with recent lattice QCD results. Emphasis is devoted to the effects of plasmons, plasminos and Landau damping. It is shown that thermodynamic bulk quantities, known at zero chemical potential, can uniquely be mapped towards nonzero chemical potential by means of a thermodynamic consistency condition and a stationarity condition.Comment: Sep. 2007. 13 pp. Invited talk given at Zimanyi 75 Memorial Workshop on Hadronic and Quark Matter, Budapest, Hungary, 2-4 Jul. 2007; reviewed and published versio

Plasmons, plasminos and Landau damping in a quasiparticle model of the quark-gluon plasma

A phenomenological quasiparticle model is surveyed for 2+1 quark flavors and compared with recent lattice QCD results. Emphasis is devoted to the effects of plasmons, plasminos and Landau damping. It is shown that thermodynamic bulk quantities, known at zero chemical potential, can uniquely be mapped towards nonzero chemical potential by means of a thermodynamic consistency condition and a stationarity condition.Comment: Sep. 2007. 13 pp. Invited talk given at Zimanyi 75 Memorial Workshop on Hadronic and Quark Matter, Budapest, Hungary, 2-4 Jul. 2007; reviewed and published versio

High dispersive and monolithic 100% efficiency grisms

We present a type of grism, a series combination of transmission grating and prism, in which we reduce the number of diffraction orders and achieve a configuration with very high angular dispersion. The grism can be fabricated from a single dielectric material and requires no metallic or dielectric film layers for high transmission diffraction efficiency. One can reach 100% in the -1st transmission diffraction order and the equal damage threshold as the dielectric bulk material. We realized such an element in fused silica with an efficiency of more then 99%. The bevel backside reflection is reduced by a statistical antireflective structure, so we measured an efficiency of the entire grism of 95% at a single wavelength

Ionization by bulk heating of electrons in capacitive radio frequency atmospheric pressure microplasmas

Electron heating and ionization dynamics in capacitively coupled radio frequency (RF) atmospheric pressure microplasmas operated in helium are investigated by Particle in Cell simulations and semi-analytical modeling. A strong heating of electrons and ionization in the plasma bulk due to high bulk electric fields are observed at distinct times within the RF period. Based on the model the electric field is identified to be a drift field caused by a low electrical conductivity due to the high electron-neutral collision frequency at atmospheric pressure. Thus, the ionization is mainly caused by ohmic heating in this "Omega-mode". The phase of strongest bulk electric field and ionization is affected by the driving voltage amplitude. At high amplitudes, the plasma density is high, so that the sheath impedance is comparable to the bulk resistance. Thus, voltage and current are about 45{\deg} out of phase and maximum ionization is observed during sheath expansion with local maxima at the sheath edges. At low driving voltages, the plasma density is low and the discharge becomes more resistive resulting in a smaller phase shift of about 4{\deg}. Thus, maximum ionization occurs later within the RF period with a maximum in the discharge center. Significant analogies to electronegative low pressure macroscopic discharges operated in the Drift-Ambipolar mode are found, where similar mechanisms induced by a high electronegativity instead of a high collision frequency have been identified

QCD equation of state: Physical quark masses and asymptotic temperatures

Within a phenomenological quasiparticle model, the quark mass and temperature dependence of the QCD equation of state is discussed and compared with lattice QCD results. Different approximations for the quasiparticle dispersion relations are employed, scaling properties of the equation of state with quark mass and deconfinement temperature are investigated and a continuation to asymptotically large temperatures is presented.Comment: Jan 2009. 8 pp. Contribution to the International School of Nuclear Physics - 30th Course: Heavy-Ion Collisions from the Coulomb Barrier to the Quark-Gluon Plasma, Erice, Sicily, Italy, 16-24 Sep 200