Interacting color strings as the origin of the liquid behavior of the quark-gluon plasma

8 pags., 4 figs.
We study the radial distribution function of the color sources (strings) formed in hadronic collisions and the requirements to obtain a liquid. As a repulsive interaction is needed, we incorporate a concentric core in the strings as well as the probability that a string allows core-core overlaps. We find systems where the difference between the gas-liquid and confined-deconfined phase transition temperatures is small. This explains the experimentally observed liquid behavior of the quark-gluon plasma above the confined-deconfined transition temperature.
J. E. R. acknowledges financial support from Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (postdoctoral fellowship Grant No. 289198). B. D. was partially supported by a DGAPA-UNAM postdoctoral fellowship and acknowledges support from the CONEX-Plus programme funded by Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 801538. C. P. has received financial support from Xunta de Galicia (Centro singular de investigación de Galicia), by European Union ERDF, and by the “María de Maeztu” Units of Excellence program MDM-2016-0692 and the Spanish Research State Agency.