The Rise and Fall of Baryons

الأصل · EN

We discuss the baryonic contribution to QCD thermodynamics near the QCD phase transition, which we split into "stringy excitations" and the "chiral" lowest states. Our finite-T string model for the former component is inspired by the lattice data on static potentials and ideas of string survival even above Tc: it is used to explain two sets of baryonic susceptibilities calculated on the lattice by the Bielefeld-BNL group. Two new ingredients of the model are (i) the near-Tc tightening of the strings, and (ii) physical upper limit of the string length. Then we proceed to more subtle effects related to chiral restoration dynamics near Tc: we suggest that "melting" of the sigma terms of the lowest nucleon/Δ masses can explain these susceptibilities. In a discussion, we consider bound monopole-quark states, as a possible explanation to some deficits of contribution at T=(1-1.4)Tc.