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Comments on the compatibility of thermodynamic equilibrium conditions with lattice propagators

High Energy Physics - Theory 2016-08-16 v3 High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena High Energy Physics - Lattice High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

In this paper the compatibility is analyzed of the non-perturbative equations of state of quarks and gluons arising from the lattice with some natural requirements for self-gravitating objects at equilibrium: the existence of an equation of state (namely, the possibility to define the pressure as a function of the energy density), the absence of superluminal propagation and Le Chatelier's principle. It is discussed under which conditions it is possible to extract an equation of state (in the above sense) from the non-perturbative propagators arising from the fits of the latest lattice data. In the quark case, there is a small but non-vanishing range of temperatures in which it is not possible to define a single-valued functional relation between density and pressure. Interestingly enough, a small change of the parameters appearing in the fit of the lattice quark propagator (of around 10~\%) could guarantee the fulfillment of all the three conditions (keeping alive, at the same time, the violation of positivity of the spectral representation, which is the expected signal of confinement). As far as gluons are concerned, the analysis shows very similar results. Whether or not the non-perturbative quark and gluon propagators satisfy these conditions can have a strong impact on the estimate of the maximal mass of quark stars.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1606.02271,
  title  = {Comments on the compatibility of thermodynamic equilibrium conditions with lattice propagators},
  author = {Fabrizio Canfora and Alex Giacomini and Pablo Pais and Luigi Rosa and Alfonso Zerwekh},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1606.02271},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

24 pages; 12 figures. Title slightly changed and improved discussion. Version accepted for publication on European Physical Journal C