Quenching through the QCD chiral phase transition

Florio, Adrien (author), Grossi, Eduardo (author), Mazeliauskas, Aleksas (author), Soloviev, Alexander (author), Teaney, Derek (author)

We present a detailed numerical and analytical study of the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of Model G, the dynamical universality class relevant to the chiral phase transition. We perform numerical 3D stochastic (Langevin) simulations of the O(4) critical point for large lattices in the chiral limit. We quench the system from the high-temperature unbroken phase to the broken phase and study the nonequilibrium dynamics of pion fields. Strikingly, the nonequilibrium evolution of the two-point functions exhibits a regime of growth, a parametrically large enhancement, and a subsequent slow relaxation to equilibrium. We analyze our numerical results using dynamic critical scaling and mean-field theory. The growth of the two-point functions is determined by the nonlinear dynamics of an ideal non-Abelian superfluid, which is a limit of Model G that reflects the broken chiral symmetry. We also relate the nonequilibrium two-point functions to a long-lived parametric enhancement of soft pion yields relative to thermal equilibrium following a quench.

• Language: English
• Keywords: high energy physics, critical phenomena, quantum chromodynamics, phase transitions
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FMF - Faculty of Mathematics and Physics
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2025
• Number of pages: Str. 114019-1-114019-27
• Numbering: Vol. 112, iss. 11
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-179108
• UDC: 539.1
• ISSN on article: 2470-0010
• DOI: 10.1103/plfm-z5xx
• COBISS.SI-ID: 267410691
• Publication date in RUL: 05.02.2026

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Physical review
• Shortened title: Phys. rev., D
• Publisher: American Physical Society
• ISSN: 2470-0010
• COBISS.SI-ID: 29757223

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: fizika visokih energij, kritični pojavi, kvantna kromodinamika, fazni prehodi