Particle Production in Matter at Extreme Conditions

Abstract

We study particle production and its density evolution and equilibration in hot dense medium, such as hadronic gas after quark gluon plasma hadronization and relativistic electron positron photon plasma. For this study we use kinetic momentum integrated equations for particles density evolution with Lorentz invariant reaction rates. We extend these equations, used before for two-to-two particles reactions (1 + 2 ↔ 3 + 4), to the case of two-to-one and backward reactions (1 + 2 ↔ 3). One type of hot dense medium, which we study, is hadronic gas produced at quark gluon plasma hadronization in heavy ions collisions in SPS, RHIC and LHC experiments. We study hadron production at quark gluon plasma hadronization and their evolution in thermal hadronic gas phase. We consider non-equilibrium hadronization model, for which the yields of the light quark hadrons are defined by entropy conservation. Yields of hadrons containing heavier (strange, charm, bottom) quarks are mainly controlled by flavor conservation. We predict yields of charm and bottom hadrons within this non-equilibrium statistical hadronization model. Then we use this non-equilibrium hadronization as the initial condition in the study of hadronic kinetic phase. During this time period some hadronic resonances can be produced in lighter hadrons fusion. This reaction is opposite to resonance decay. Production of resonances is dominant over decay if there is non-equilibrium excess of decay products. Within this model we explain apparently contradictory experimental results reported in RHIC experiments: ∑(1385) yield is enhanced while ∧(1520) yield is suppressed compared to the statistical hadronization model expectation obtained without kinetic phase. We also predict Δ(1232) enhancement. The second type of plasma medium we consider is the relativistic electron position photon plasma (EP³) drop. This plasma is expected to be produced in decay of supercritical field created in ultrashort laser pulse. We study at what conditions this plasma drop is opaque for photons and therefore may reach thermal and chemical equilibrium. Further we consider muon and pion production in this plasma also as a diagnostic tool. Such heavy particles can be diagnostic tool to study the properties of EP³ plasma, similar to the role taken by heavy hadrons production in heavy ions collisions. Finally all these theoretical developments can be applied to begin a study of particles evolution in early universe in temperatures domain from QGP hadronization (160 MeV) to nucleosynthesis (0.1 MeV). The first results on pion equilibration are presented here.