Supercooled Goldstone bosons at the QCD chiral phase transition

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

We discuss a universal nonequilibrium enhancement of long-wavelength Goldstone bosons induced by quenches to the broken phase in Model G—the dynamical universality class of an O⁡(4) antiferromagnet and the chiral phase transition in QCD. Scaling arguments for the coarsening dynamics describing the formation of the chiral condensate predict a parametric enhancement in the infrared spectra of Goldstone bosons, a prediction confirmed by stochastic simulations of the transition. The details of the enhancement are determined by the nonlinear dynamics of a superfluid effective theory, which is a limit of Model G reflecting the broken O⁡(4) symmetry. Our results translate to a parametric enhancement of low-momentum pions in heavy-ion collisions at the LHC, which are underpredicted in current hydrodynamic models without critical dynamics.

• Language: English
• Keywords: critical phenomena, quantum chromodynamics, phase transitions, high energy physics
• 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. 242303-1-242303-7
• Numbering: Vol. 135, iss. 24
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-179114
• UDC: 539.1
• ISSN on article: 0031-9007
• DOI: 10.1103/wyn4-ncdc
• COBISS.SI-ID: 267422467
• Publication date in RUL: 05.02.2026

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Physical review letters
• Shortened title: Phys. rev. lett.
• Publisher: American Physical Society
• ISSN: 0031-9007
• COBISS.SI-ID: 1282575

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: kritični pojavi, kvantna kromodinamika, fazni prehodi, fizika visokih energij