Related papers: Center Domains and their Phenomenological Conseque…
This is a review of strong coupling approaches to grasp the nature of the phase transition in finite temperature and density QCD. We commence with classics of the center symmetry and the Polyakov loop in pure gauge theories. The effective…
A synthesis of Polyakov loop models of the deconfinement transition and quasiparticle models of gluon plasma thermodynamics leads to a class of models in which gluon quasiparticles move in a non-trivial Polyakov loop background. These…
Recent experiments at RHIC and theoretical considerations indicate that the quark-gluon plasma, present in the fireball of relativistic heavy-ion collisions, might be in a liquid phase. The liquid state can be identified by characteristic…
We investigate correlation functions of the Polyakov loop and static meson/diquark systems with the chiral condensate and the quark number density at finite temperature. In particular the latter observable can give insight in the mechanism…
The lecture is a brief review of the following topics: (i) collective flow phenomena in heavy ion collisions. The data from RHIC indicate robust collective flows, well described by hydrodynamics with expected Equation of State. The…
We compute the spectrum of gluons emitted by a highly energetic quark inside a flowing QCD medium, focusing on the soft gluon limit at first order in the opacity expansion. Specifically, we derive the leading energy-suppressed corrections…
The Polyakov loop and the chiral condensate are used as order parameters to explore analytically the possible phase structure of finite temperature QCD. Nambu-Jona-Lasinio models in a background temporal gauge field are combined with a…
The QCD-vacuum is characterized by the Higgs phenomenon for colored scalar fields. In this dual picture the gluons appear as the octet of vector mesons. Also quarks and baryons are identified. Gluon-meson and quark-baryon duality can…
After reviewing the evidence that QCD matter at ultrarelativistic energies behaves as a very good fluid, we describe the connection of QCD fluidity to heavy quark observables. We review the way in which heavy quark spectra can place tighter…
The low-energy QCD theorems are generalized in the presence of a constant magnetic field H. Two-loop approximation for the vacuum energy density in the framework of the chiral perturbation theory was obtained and the quark and gluon…
A number of theoretical and lattice results lead us to believe that Quark-Gluon Plasma not too far from $T_c$ contains not only electrically charged quasiparticles -- quarks and gluons -- but magnetically charged ones -- monopoles and dyons…
At low temperatures we expect that all QCD observables are defined in terms of hadrons. This includes the partition function as well as the Polyakov loop in all representations. We analyze the physics underlying a microscopic derivation of…
Starting from Wilson's action, we calculate strong coupling series for the Polyakov loop susceptibility in lattice gauge theories for various small N_\tau in the thermodynamic limit. Analysing the series with Pad\'e approximants, we…
Using combined strong coupling and hopping parameter expansions, we derive an effective three-dimensional theory from thermal lattice QCD with heavy Wilson quarks. The theory depends on traced Polyakov loops only and correctly reflects the…
In this contribution we will discuss two aspects of the matter created in ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions. First we will attempt to define a universal measure for the fluidity of a substance, which will allow a correct comparison…
We describe how the coupling of the gluonic Polyakov loop to quarks solves different inconsistencies in the standard treatment of chiral quark models at finite temperature at the one quark loop level. Large gauge invariance is incorporated…
For the exploration of the phase diagram of QCD, effective Polyakov loop theories derived from lattice QCD provide a valuable tool in the heavy quark mass regime. In practice, the evaluation of these theories is complicated by the…
The ultimate aim of high energy heavy ion collisions is to study quark deconfinement and the quark-gluon plasma predicted by quantum chromodynamics. This requires the identification of observables calculable in QCD and measurable in heavy…
The relation between the deconfinement and chiral phase transition is explored in the framework of an Polyakov-loop-extended two-flavor quark-meson (PQM) model. In this model the Polyakov loop dynamics is represented by a background…
This brief review summarizes the main experimental discoveries made at RHIC and then discusses their implications. The robust collective flow phenomena are well described by ideal hydrodynamics, with the Equation of State (EoS) predicted by…