The Role of Color-Magnetic Monopoles in a Gluonic Plasma

The role of color-magnetic monopoles in a pure gauge plasma at high temperature $T>2T_c$ is considered. In this temperature regime, monopoles can be considered heavy, rare objects embedded into matter consisting mostly of the usual "electric" quasiparticles, quarks and gluons. The gluon-monopole scattering is found to hardly influence thermodynamic quantities, yet it produces a large transport cross section, significantly exceeding that for pQCD gluon-gluon scattering up to quite high $T$. This mechanism keeps viscosity small enough for hydrodynamics to work at LHC.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, Talk presented at the Quark Matter 2009 Conference, Knoxville, T

Phases of QCD, Polyakov Loop and Quasiparticles

QCD thermodynamics is studied using a model which combines Polyakov loop dynamics with spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking and its restoration (the PNJL model). The input is fixed entirely by pure-gauge lattice QCD results and by pion properties in vacuum. Successful comparisons with results from thermal lattice QCD are achieved, including extrapolations to finite quark chemical potential. The phase diagram and selected susceptibilities for two quark flavors are investigated with inclusion of diquark degrees of freedom.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures. To appear in Proceedings YKIS2006, Prog. Theor. Phys. Suppl. (Kyoto

Real and imaginary-time quarkonium correlators in a hot plasma

The possibility of describing the behavior of a $Q\overline{Q}$ pair in a hot plasma in terms of an effective potential is investigated. It is shown that as long as medium effects can be embodied in a gaussian action, like in the QED case, the $Q\overline{Q}$ propagator obeys a closed temporal evolution equation whose large-time behavior is governed by an effective potential. The latter, beside screening, displays also an imaginary part related to collisions.Comment: Talk given at the 8-th Conference "Quark Confinement and the Hadron Spectrum", Mainz, Germany, 1-6 September 200

Recent thermodynamic results from lattice QCD analyzed within a quasi-particle model

The thermodynamic behavior of QCD matter at high temperature is currently studied by lattice QCD theory. The main features are the fast rise of the energy density $\epsilon$ around the critical temperature $T_c$ and the large trace anomaly of the energy momentum tensor $< \Theta_\mu^\mu >=\epsilon - 3 P$ which hints at a strongly interacting system. Such features can be accounted for by employing a massive quasi-particle model with a temperature-dependent bag constant. Recent lattice QCD calculations with physical quark masses by the Wuppertal-Budapest group have shown a slower increase of $\epsilon$ and a smaller $<\Theta_\mu^\mu>$ peak with respect to previous results from the hotQCD collaboration. We investigate the implications of such differences from the point of view of a quasi-particle model, also discussing light and strange quark number susceptibilities. Furthermore, we predict the impact of these discrepancies on the temperature-dependence of the transport properties of matter, like the shear and bulk viscosities.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figures; version accepted in Phys. Rev.D; calculation with relaxation time \tau \sim g^4 ln g has been adde

Impact of resonance regeneration and decay on the net-proton fluctuations in a hadron resonance gas

We investigate net-proton fluctuations as important observables measured in heavy-ion collisions within the hadron resonance gas (HRG) model. Special emphasis is given to effects which are a priori not inherent in a thermally and chemically equilibrated HRG approach. In particular, we point out the importance of taking into account the successive regeneration and decay of resonances below the chemical freeze-out, which lead to a randomization of the isospin of nucleons and thus to additional fluctuations in the net-proton number. We find good agreement between our model results and the recent STAR measurements of the higher-order moments of the net-proton distribution