Deconfinement

Deconfinement

In physics, deconfinement (in contrast to confinement) is the property of a phase in which certain particles are allowed to exist as free excitations, rather than only within bound states. Various examples exist in particle physics and condensed matter, where certain gauge theories exhibit transitions between confining and deconfining phases.

A prominent example, and the first case considered as such in theoretical physics, occurs at high energy in quantum chromodynamics when quarks and gluons are free to move over distances larger than a femtometer (the size of a hadron). This phase is also called the quark-gluon plasma.

Spin–charge separation is an example of deconfinement in condensed matter physics: the electron can be viewed as a bound state of a 'spinon' and 'chargon', which under certain conditions can become free to move separately.

See also



Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужна курсовая?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • deconfinement — noun That state of a system of quarks and gluons that are free to move relatively independently See Also: deconfined …   Wiktionary

  • Onset of deconfinement — The strange matter horn . The ratio of mean multiplicities of positively charged kaons and pions as a function of collision energy in collisions of two lead nuclei and proton–proton interactions. The onset of deconfinement refers to the beginning …   Wikipedia

  • Marek Gazdzicki — Born 9 June 1956 Warsaw, Poland …   Wikipedia

  • Quark star — A quark star or strange star is a hypothetical type of exotic star composed of quark matter, or strange matter. These are ultra dense phases of degenerate matter theorized to form inside particularly massive neutron stars. It is theorized that… …   Wikipedia

  • QCD vacuum — The QCD vacuum is the vacuum state of quantum chromodynamics (QCD). It is an example of a non perturbative vacuum state, characterized by many non vanishing condensates such as the gluon condensate or the quark condensate. These condensates… …   Wikipedia

  • Wilson loop — In gauge theory, a Wilson loop (named after Kenneth Wilson) is a gauge invariant observable obtained from the holonomy of the gauge connection around a given loop. In the classical theory, the collection of all Wilson loops contains sufficient… …   Wikipedia

  • Lattice gauge theory — In physics, lattice gauge theory is the study of gauge theories on a spacetime that has been discretized onto a lattice. Although most lattice gauge theories are not exactly solvable, they are of tremendous appeal because they can be studied by… …   Wikipedia

  • Order-disorder — In quantum field theory and statistical mechanics in the thermodynamic limit, a system with a global symmetry can have more than one phase. For parameters where the symmetry is spontaneously broken, the system is said to be ordered. When the… …   Wikipedia

  • J/ψ meson — J/ψ Composition cc Statistics Bosonic Interactions Strong, Weak, Electromagnetic force, Gravity Symbol …   Wikipedia

  • Hagedorn temperature — In theoretical physics, the Hagedorn temperature is the temperature above which the partition sum diverges in a system with exponential growth in the density of states.:lim {T ightarrow T H^ } Tr [e^{ eta H}] =inftyBecause of the divergence,… …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
… Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”