Mass spectrum of the temperature dependent Bethe-Salpeter equation for composites of quarks with a Coulomb plus a linear kernel

Abstract:

We assume that high-energy nucleus-nucleus interactions give rise to a hot and dense plasma comprising quarks and gluons due to successive nucleon-nucleon collisions. We treat this plasma as an ideal fluid at temperature T prior to its eventual particlization, and attempt a microscopic description of meson-formation by using finite temperature propagators for q and ¯q in a Bethe-Salpeter equation with a Coulomb plus a linear kernel. The equation thus obtained is reduced to a Schrodinger-like equation which then yields, for 0 < T < 86 MeV, the bound state masses for different states of b¯b and c¯c, which are in agreement with the experimental values for these states. The effects of the temperature of the plasma on the meson masses show up only when the temperature exceeds 86 MeV, pointing to the probable reason for the successes of the earlier models which did not explicitly take the temperature of the plasma into account.