Related papers: Center Domains and their Phenomenological Conseque…

We suggest that clusters or domains of topological charge and action density occur in the QCD vacuum as an effect of singularities in gauge fields and can simultaneously lead to confinement and chiral symmetry breaking. The string constant,…

In this talk, I reflect on the physical origin of the strongly coupled character of the quark-gluon plasma.

The present thesis is devoted to the study of some of the features of the deconfined state of matter dubbed Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP). The different properties of the extreme matter that have been studied in this thesis are next-to-leading…

In this work I explore theoretical and phenomenological implications of chemical potentials and charge densities inside a strongly coupled thermal plasma, using the gauge/gravity correspondence. Strong coupling effects discovered in this…

I discuss lattice QCD calculations of the properties of strongly interacting matter at finite temperature, including the determination of the transition temperature Tc, equation of state, different static screening lengths and quarkonium…

In this lecture, we give a brief review of what theorists now know, understand, or guess about static and kinetic properties of quark--gluon plasma. A particular attention is payed to the problem of physical observability, i.e. the physical…

We present a quasiparticle model for the pure gauge sector of QCD, in which transverse quasigluons propagate in a Polyakov loop background field. By incorporating thermodynamic self-consistency in the approach, we show that our Polyakov…

We investigate the effective potential of the Polyakov loop, which is the order parameter for the deconfinement phase transition in finite temperature QCD. Our work is based on the Hamiltonian approach in Coulomb gauge where finite…

We consider a two-component-liquid model, a la Landau, for the quark-gluon plasma. Qualitatively, the model fits well some crucial observations concerning the plasma properties. Dynamically, the model assumes the existence of an effective…

We review various theoretical approaches to the states of QCD matter out of quarks and gluons in extreme environments such as the high-temperature states at zero and finite baryon density and the dimensionally reduced state under an intense…

We put forward a Polyakov-loop extended quark meson model, where matter as well as glue fluctuations are taken into account, cf. [1]. The latter are included via a Polyakov-loop potential. Usually such a glue potential is based on…

Quantum chromodynamics predicts that the interaction between its fundamental constituents, quarks and gluons, can lead to different states of strongly interacting matter, dependent on its temperature and baryon density. We first survey the…

As implied by organizers, this talk is not a conference summary but rather an outline of progress/challenges/``frontiers'' of the theory. Some fundamental questions addressed are: Why is sQGP such a good liquid? Do we understand…

We study genuine finite density effects in QCD-like theories with three-dimensional Polyakov-loop effective theories for heavy quarks. These are derived from the full QCD-like theories by combined strong-coupling and hopping expansions. In…

Based on simple physics arguments it is shown that the concept of quark-gluon plasma, a state of matter consisting of uncorrelated quarks, antiquarks, and gluons, has a fundamental problem.

We employ the string/gauge theory correspondence to study properties of strongly coupled quark-gluon plasmas in thermal gauge theories with a large number of colors and flavors. In particular, we analyze non-critical string duals of…

This review cover our current understanding of strongly coupled Quark-Gluon Plasma (sQGP), especially theoretical progress in (i) explaining the RHIC data by hydrodynamics, (ii) describing lattice data using electric-magnetic duality; (iii)…

We study the phase structure of QCD at finite temperature within a Polyakov-loop enhanced quark-meson model. Such a model describes the chiral as well as the confinement-deconfinement dynamics. In the present investigation, based on the…

I give a brief overview of recent theoretical developments concerning the high temperature phase of QCD, and the structure of hadronic wave functions at high energy.

Screening properties of the quark gluon plasma are studied from Polyakov-loop correlation in lattice QCD simulations with two flavors of improved Wilson quarks at temperatures $T/\Tpc \simeq 1$--4 where $\Tpc$ is the pseudocritical…