Free Meson Seminars

Kaon flavor correlations as signature of melting and refreezing of QCD vacuum at the LHC

by Dr. Mayank Singh (Vanderbilt University, USA)

Thursday, February 22, 2024 from to (Asia/Kolkata)
at AG66 and on Zoom
Description Please contact rishi(at)theory(dot)tifr(dot)res(dot)in for the zoom meeting id and the password for this seminar.

The heavy-ion collision experiments produce the deconfined state of nuclear matter, the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). At QGP temperatures, the vacuum condensate is expected to melt leading to the restoration of the approximate chiral symmetry of QCD. As the plasma expands and cools, the chiral condensates are formed again. So far, concrete experimental evidence of this widely expected phenomena has proved elusive. The ALICE collaboration has reported anomalous correlations between charged and neutral kaons in Pb-Pb collisions at the LHC. We show that the measurements cannot be explained by usual statistical models but can be explained by invoking domains of coherent emission. Such domains can be related to the fluctuations of the up and down quark condensates as the vacuum refreezes.