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# Partial Deconfinement in Color Superconductivity

## I Introduction

Quark matter at very high density is expected to behave as a color superconductor REV . Possible physical applications are related to the physics of compact objects REV , supernovae cooling Carter:2000xf  and explosions HHS  as well as to the Gamma Ray Bursts puzzle OS . Here we concentrate on some features related to color superconductivity with 2 light flavors (2SC). The low-energy effective Lagrangian describing the in medium fermions and the broken sector of the $`SU_c(3)`$ color groups for the 2 flavor color superconductor (2SC) has been constructed in Ref. CDS ; OS2 . The 3 flavor case (CFL) has been developed in CG ; Casalbuoni:1999zi . The effective theories describing the electroweak interactions for the low-energy excitations in the 2SC and CFL case can be found in CDS2001 . The global anomalies matching conditions and constrains are discussed in S . An interesting property of the $`2SC`$ state is that the three color gauge group breaks spontaneously to a left over $`SU(2)`$ subgroup and it can play a role for the physics of compact objects OS . In Reference rischke2k  it has been shown that the confining scale of the unbroken $`SU(2)`$ color subgroup is lighter than the superconductive gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$. The confined degrees of freedom, glueball-like particles, are expected to be light with respect to $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$, and the effective theory based on the anomalous variation of the dilation current has been constructed in OS2 .

Clearly for the physics of compact objects and more generally for a complete understanding of the QCD phase diagram it is relevant to know at what temperature the $`SU(2)`$ color gauge group confines/deconfines, the order of the phase transition and the equation of state.

Investigating the deconfinement phase transition is, in general, a complex problem. At zero density importance sampling lattice simulations are able to provide vital information about the nature of the temperature driven phase transition for 2 and 3 colors Yang-Mills theories with and without matter fields (see Karsch:2001jb  for a review). Different models Campbell:ak ; Simonov:bc ; Agasian:fn ; Sollfrank:du ; Carter:1998ti ; Schaefer:2001cn ; Drago:2001gd ; Renk:2002md ; Pisarski:2001pe ; DP ; KorthalsAltes:1999cp ; Dumitru:2001xa ; Scavenius:2002ru ; Wirstam:2001ka  are used in literature to tackle/study the features of this phase transition from a theoretical stand point. Some models compute non zero temperature corrections for the glueball Lagrangian with or without elementary gluon degrees of freedom (the latter added to describe the deconfined side of the phase transition). Others rely on mean field theories encoding the symmetries of the Polyakov loops Pisarski:2001pe .

Hence we consider a simple, but predictive, model for the deconfinement temperature which makes use of the glueball Lagrangian valid at non zero quark density OS2 . We investigate the one loop thermal effective potential corrections for the dilatonic Lagrangian and observe that as we increase the temperature a new local minimum sets in for a lower value of the gluon condensate with respect to the zero temperature one. The critical temperature is defined as the value for which the two local minima have the same free energy value. Above this critical temperature the model is no longer applicable since new degrees of freedom like the unconfined gluons are expected to appear (see e.g. Carter:1998ti ) and we will briefly comment on their effects. An amusing feature of the model is that the critical temperature can be determined analytically. This is so since the new minimum appears for a zero vacuum expectation value of the gluon condensate 111In the full theory it is more reasonable to expect just a drastic drop of the condensate close to the phase transition. and at this point, in the one loop approximation, one can exactly compute the effective thermal potential yielding the following estimate for the critical temperature:

$$T_c=\sqrt[4]{\frac{90v^3}{2e\pi ^2}}\widehat{\mathrm{\Lambda }}.$$
(1)
Here $`e`$ is the Euler number, $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Lambda }}`$ is the confining scale of the $`SU(2)`$ gluon-dynamics in 2SC and $`v`$ is the gluon rischke2k  as well as light glueball velocity OS2 . Equation (1) is a good approximation also for the in vacuum theory. Here when Eq. (1) is adjusted to take into account the gluonic degrees of freedom the higher order (in loop) contributions are shown to be less than 10% (see Carter:1998ti ).

We find that the deconfining/confining critical temperature is smaller than the critical temperature $`T_{2SC}`$ for the superconductive state itself which is estimated to be $`T_{2SC}0.57\mathrm{\Delta }`$ with $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ the 2SC gap PR . Actually the breaking of Lorentz invariance, due to the quark chemical potential and encoded in the glueball velocity, further reduces the critical temperature by a factor $`v^{3/4}`$ relative to the in vacuum case. This is a general feature independent of the model Lagrangian, also observed in Casalbuoni:1999zi . The temperatures in play are much less than the value of the quark chemical potential. The situation is more involved if also rotational invariance breaks spontaneously due, for example, to the appearance of a spin one condensate Sannino:2001fd . We study the glueball mass as function of temperature, chemical potential and $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$. In the confined phase the mass is, at a very good approximation, constant with respect to the temperature.

By computing the glueball thermal effective potential we provide part of the equation of state for the 2SC phase at low temperatures. In particular we can compute the pressure, the energy density and the entropy of the system below the critical deconfining temperature.

It is important to stress that in this paper we are considering an ideal 2SC state where the up and down quarks are massless and the strange quark is infinitely massive. When computing properties related to the physics of compact stars it is very important to introduce in the model the effects of the quark masses as well as the ones induced by a not too heavy strange quark. These effects may affect the $`SU(2)`$ gluon properties and can be investigated using for example the effective theories near the fermi surface REV . It would also be very interesting to see how the non perturbative $`SU(2)`$ dynamics might affect the recent results in Alford:2002kj . However even within the present restrictive framework our estimate for the $`SU(2)`$ confining temperature may be a useful guide for astrophysical models of compact stars like the one in Ref. OS  featuring a 2SC state.

Since the gluon-condensate is not a true order parameter for the deconfining transition the glueball Lagrangian cannot be used to infer the order of the transition itself. To settle this issue we modify the Polyakov’s loop inspired model Pisarski:2001pe  to fit the present case and finally predict a second order phase transition. Finally we suggest how ordinary lattice importance sampling techniques can be used to check our results and constitute, at the same time, the first simulations testing the high quark chemical potential but small temperature region of the QCD phase diagram.

The glueball Lagrangian, if extended to describe the transition point, predicts a first order transition which seems to disagree with the prediction based on the order parameter (Polyakov’s loop). Actually the disagreement is an apparent one. Indeed only the order parameter is obliged to know about the order of the phase transition. Any other gauge invariant quantity does not need to display the same behavior while still bearing information about the phase transition itself (see for example Pisarski:2001pe  page 3 equations (9) and (10) and subsequent discussion (first reference)). In practice the critical temperature predicted represents also the limit of applicability of our simple model. At the critical point the Ginzburg-Landau theory for the order parameter is the proper way to describe the transition itself and can be used to infer the order of the phase transition. Unfortunately though the Ginzburg-Landau theory cannot predict the critical temperature. The previous discussion does not imply that the glueball and the order parameter (the Polyakov loop) at the transition are not related Sannino:2002wb .

It is important to stress that in general we have a tower of scalar, pseudoscalar and other excited glueball states in the confined regime together with the other physical states involving quarks of the 2SC state. We have made the standard assumption that the low energy $`SU(2)`$ dynamics is dominated by the associated lightest mode in the theory: the scalar glueball. This state does not couple to the light ungapped up and down quarks in the direction 3 of color (for a review of the complete low energy effective theory of the 2SC state see the 7th reference in REV ). Besides, according to Litim:2001je , the quark temperature effects are exponentially suppressed ($`\mathrm{exp}(\mathrm{\Delta }/T)`$) so for $`T<T_c`$ and $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Lambda }}<\mathrm{\Delta }`$, for an initial investigation, we can neglect these corrections. For temperatures in the range $`T_c<T<T_{2SC}`$ the gapped quark dynamics is no longer negligible and some of their effects have been computed using transport theory in Litim:2001je . Our model must be considered only as a first step toward a more complete theory of the 2SC state where the $`SU(2)`$ non perturbative dynamics is included.

In Section II we provide the light glueball Lagrangian and construct the one loop thermal effective action. Here we suggest a way to relate the results obtained by employing different parameterizations for the glueball field. In Section III we study the relevant features connected with the deconfining transition. We provide an economical criterion to estimate the critical temperature similar to the one extensively used in literature for the in vacuum Yang-Mills theories Carter:1998ti . Finally using the Polyakov loop model adapted to the present case we show the phase transition to be likely second order. We conclude in Section IV.

## II Glueball Effective Lagrangian at finite Temperature

The light glueball action for the in–medium Yang-Mills theory is OS2 :

$`S_{Glueball}={\displaystyle }`$ $`d^4x`$ $`\left\{{\displaystyle \frac{c}{2}}H^{\frac{3}{2}}\left[^0H^0Hv^2^iH^iH\right]{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}H\mathrm{log}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{H}{\widehat{\mathrm{\Lambda }}^4}}\right]\right\}.`$ (2)
$`H`$ is the composite field describing, upon quantization, the scalar glueball OS2 ; schechter ; SS ; SSSusy ; MS ; SST ; GJJK ; CE  in medium and possesses mass-scale dimensions four. Here $`c`$ is a positive constant 222Here we absorbed the coefficient $`b`$ present in the Lagrangian of OS2  in the definition for $`H`$. This coefficient is relevant when comparing the results of the glueball Lagrangian derived for different number of colors and flavors SS . which fixes the tree glueball mass. Our results do not depend on the specific value assumed by this constant. It is also important to stress that the glueballs move with the same velocity as the underlying gluons in the 2SC color superconductor OS2 . The velocity depends on the gluon dielectric constant ($`ϵ`$) and magnetic permeability ($`\lambda `$) via $`v=1/\sqrt{ϵ\lambda }`$. The dielectric constant $`ϵ`$ is different from unity (in fact $`ϵ1`$ in the 2SC case rischke2k ) leading to an effectively reduced gauge coupling constant. Studying the polarization tensor at asymptotically high quark densities for the $`SU(2)`$ gluons in rischke2k  was found:

$$ϵ=1+\frac{g_s^2\mu ^2}{18\pi ^2\mathrm{\Delta }^2},\lambda =1,$$
(3)
with $`g_s`$ the underlying $`SU(3)`$ coupling constant and $`\mu `$ the quark chemical potential. This result has also been derived via effective theories valid close to the Fermi surface Casalbuoni2001 . In the effective Lagrangian $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Lambda }}`$ is a physical constant related to the confining scale of the in– medium 2 color Yang-Mills theory. Following rischke2k  we have the one loop relation:

$`\widehat{\mathrm{\Lambda }}=\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{exp}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{8\pi ^2}{bg_s^2(\mu )}}\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{ϵ(\mu /\mathrm{\Delta })}{\lambda (\mu /\mathrm{\Delta })}}}\right]\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{exp}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{2\sqrt{2}\pi }{11}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mu }{g_s(\mu )\mathrm{\Delta }}}\right],`$ (4)
with $`b=22/3`$ (at one loop) for $`SU(2)`$ and in the last step we considered the asymptotic solution of Ref. rischke2k , for convenience reported in Eq. (3). By using $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}300`$ MeV, $`\mu 500`$ MeV and a gap value of about $`30`$ MeV one gets $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Lambda }}1`$ MeV. It is hence reasonable to expect that the glueballs are light (with respect to the gap) with a mass typically somewhat larger or of the order of the confining scale. They are stable with respect to the strong interactions unlike ordinary glueballs while still decaying into two photons OS2 . The potential in Eq. (2) can be considered a zeroth order model schechter ; MS ; SST  for a Yang-Mills theory in medium OS2  in which the glueballs are the associated hadronic particles. The minimum of the potential $`V`$ (see OS2  for details) is taken for

$$H=\frac{\widehat{\mathrm{\Lambda }}^4}{e},\mathrm{at}\mathrm{which}\mathrm{point}V=\frac{\widehat{\mathrm{\Lambda }}^4}{2e}.$$
(5)
For the zero density case a number of phenomenological questions have been discussed using this type of toy model Lagrangian Eq. (2) SST .

In order to extract dynamical information we define a canonically normalized (with canonical mass dimension one) glueball field $`h`$ via:

$$H=f(h)=f_{(0)}^4+f_{(1)}h+f_{(2)}\frac{h^2}{2!}+\mathrm{}+f_{(n)}\frac{h^n}{n!}+\mathrm{},$$
(6)
where we require $`f(h)`$ to be a well behaved function of the glueball field $`h`$ with non vanishing $`f_{(0)}`$ and $`f_{(1)}`$. The normalization condition of the kinetic term, at the tree level, yields the constraint:

$$c^{\frac{1}{2}}f_{(1)}=f_{(0)}^3.$$
(7)
It is reasonable to expect that any interpolating function $`f(h)`$ should lead to the same physical results. This is indeed the case at the tree level since all of the possible choices to define a canonically normalized field are equivalent.

However when considering thermal/quantum corrections is hard to demonstrate that different choices lead to the same physical results. We remind the reader of the time-honored sigma model example where the linear version is a renormalizable theory while the non linear sigma model is not a renormalizable theory in the usual sense.

In order to keep our results as independent as possible from the specific function $`f(h)`$ here we define thermal averages directly in terms of $`H`$. More specifically following Dolan and Jackiw Dolan:qd  we formally introduce the temperature effective action $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\overline{H})`$ -the generating functional for single-particle irreducible Green’s functions via:

$`W[J]`$ $`=`$ $`i\mathrm{log}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{Tr}e^\frac{}{T}\mathrm{exp}\left[id^4xH(x)J(x)\right]}{\mathrm{Tr}e^\frac{}{T}}}\right],`$ (8)
$`\overline{H}(x)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\delta W[J]}{\delta J(x)}},`$ (9)
$`\mathrm{\Gamma }[\overline{H}]`$ $`=`$ $`W[J]{\displaystyle d^4x\overline{H}(x)J(x)}.`$ (10)
$``$ is the Hamiltonian and $`J(x)`$ the external source for the gluon condensate. In the last equation $`J(x)`$ is eliminated in favor of $`\overline{H}(x)`$ by the definition in (9). We also have that $`\delta \mathrm{\Gamma }[\overline{H}]/\delta \overline{H}(x)=J(x)`$ and $`\overline{H}(x)`$, evaluated at $`J=0`$, is the thermodynamic average of the gluon condensate field $`H(x)`$. The present definition of the effective action is independent of the choice of the interpolating field function. For the present purposes it is sufficient to study $`\mathrm{\Gamma }[\overline{H}]`$ for constant $`\overline{H}(x)`$ and consider the effective potential:

$$V[\overline{H}]=\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }[\overline{H}]}{\mathrm{space}\mathrm{time}\mathrm{volume}}.$$
(11)
In practice the $`J`$ dependent tree generating functional for the trace anomaly is (with $`V\left[J\right]=W\left[J\right]/(\mathrm{space}\mathrm{time}\mathrm{volume})`$ for constant fields)

$$V_{Tree}[J]=\frac{1}{2}H\mathrm{log}\left[\frac{H}{\widehat{\mathrm{\Lambda }}^4}\right]JH.$$
(12)
and the one loop thermal effective potential as function of $`J`$ is:

$`V[J]`$ $`=`$ $`2f_{(0)}^4\mathrm{log}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{f_{(0)}}{\widehat{\mathrm{\Lambda }}}}\right]Jf_{(0)}^4+{\displaystyle \frac{T}{v^3\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑kk^2\mathrm{log}\left[1\mathrm{exp}\left({\displaystyle \frac{ϵ_J}{T}}\right)\right],`$ (13)
where $`ϵ_J=\sqrt{k^2+M_J^2(f_{(0)},f_{(2)})}`$, and $`M_J^2`$ is defined via the curvature of the potential as

$$M_J^2=\frac{^2V}{h^2}|_{h=0}=\frac{f_{(0)}^2}{2c}+f_{(2)}\left[2\mathrm{log}\frac{\sqrt[4]{e}f_0}{\widehat{\mathrm{\Lambda }}}J\right].$$
(14)
With the help of

$$\overline{H}\overline{h}^4=\frac{\delta V\left[J\right]}{\delta J}=f_{(0)}^4+\frac{f_{(2)}}{v^34\pi ^2}_0^{\mathrm{}}\frac{dkk^2}{\left[\mathrm{exp}\left({\displaystyle \frac{ϵ_J}{T}}\right)1\right]ϵ_J},$$
(15)
we deduce the effective potential

$$V[\overline{h}]=\left[1J\frac{}{J}\right]V[J],$$
(16)
where the functional derivative with respect to $`J`$ is replaced with a partial derivative since we are now dealing with constant fields. We need now to solve for $`J[\overline{H}]`$ as function of $`\overline{H}`$ and then extremize the action. We identify $`\overline{H}`$ with $`\overline{h}^4`$ only after $`J`$ has been eliminated. For a general choice the function $`f(h)`$ one cannot find an analytical expression for $`J[\overline{H}]`$. However we immediately notice that for $`f_{(2)}=0`$ (at the one-loop level) there is no dependence on $`J`$ and we have $`\overline{h}=f_{(0)}`$ as well as a positive definite curvature $`M^2=f_{(0)}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}/2c`$. To be more specific our glueball field function is now $`f(h)=f_{(0)}^4+f_{(1)}h`$ where we truncate our function to the quadratic term since higher terms do not affect the one loop result. Actually any function $`f(h)`$ with just vanishing $`f_{(2)}`$ leads to the same source independent effective thermal potential:

$`V\left[\overline{h}\right]={\displaystyle \frac{\widehat{\mathrm{\Lambda }}^4}{2e}}+2\overline{h}^4\mathrm{log}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\overline{h}}{\widehat{\mathrm{\Lambda }}}}\right]+{\displaystyle \frac{T^4}{v^3\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑xx^2\mathrm{log}\left[1\mathrm{exp}\left(\sqrt{x^2+{\displaystyle \frac{\overline{h}^2}{2cT^2}}}\right)\right],`$ (17)
where for convenience we subtracted the constant value of the potential evaluated on the vacuum at zero temperature. This expression is well defined for any value of $`\overline{h}`$. $`V\left[\overline{h}\right]`$ is shown in Fig. 1 for different values of the temperature and a given value of $`c`$ which fixes the zero temperature tree-level glueball mass (i.e. $`M^2=\widehat{\mathrm{\Lambda }}^2/2\sqrt{e}c`$). The plot is provided only for illustration and the general feature of the potential does not change for different choices of the chemical potential and reasonable values of the gap parameter. Note that our results for the critical temperature (presented in the next section) are evaluated at different values of the quark chemical potential and the gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$. As we increase the temperature we observe a new minimum setting in for $`\overline{h}`$ at zero. We also note that the position of the old minimum is not much affected by temperature corrections over a large range of temperatures (see Fig. 1). Close to the new minimum at zero is possible to perform the high temperature expansion leading to:

$`\underset{\overline{h}0}{lim}V\left[\overline{h}\right]={\displaystyle \frac{\widehat{\mathrm{\Lambda }}^4}{2e}}{\displaystyle \frac{2\pi ^2}{90}}{\displaystyle \frac{T^4}{v^3}}+{\displaystyle \frac{\overline{h}^2}{2c}}{\displaystyle \frac{T^2}{24v^3}}+𝒪\left(\overline{h}^4\right).`$ (18)
Before describing in some detail the features of the phase transition we now briefly comment on another possible choice of the glueball field widely used in literature. This is the exponential representation:

$`H=f_{(0)}^4\mathrm{exp}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{h}{f_{(0)}\sqrt{c}}}\right].`$ (19)
This function recovers the previous one for small field fluctuations. However since $`f_{(2)}=f_{(0)}^2/c`$ is not vanishing we cannot deduce an analytical expression of $`J`$ as function of $`\overline{h}`$. Note that if we would naively set $`J`$ to zero from the beginning the second derivative of the potential defined in Eq. (14) is not definite positive for all values of $`\overline{h}`$ and the integral in Eq. (17) is ill defined. Often in the literature the thermal corrections are computed without including the source $`J`$. We have shown that, at the one loop level, the linearly realized representation is not affected by the introduction of the source term while the non linear realization used for example in Drago:2001gd  are very much affected and should be handled with care. We expect the partial derivative term $`JV[J]/J`$ in Eq. (16) to help compensating for the possible different choices of $`f(h)`$. In the rest of this work we shall use the linear realizations.

Clearly after having defined the extremum of the effective potential it is a simple matter to derive all of the relevant thermodynamical quantities. For the reader’s convenience we summarize the standard relations between the thermodynamical quantities and the free energy (per unit volume) $`F=V`$ (V is evaluated on the minimum) with the pressure $`P=F`$ while the entropy per unit volume is $`S=F/T`$.

## III Relevant features of the deconfining transition

Studying the one loop thermal effective potential in Eq. (16) one observes that when increasing the temperature a new local minimum sets in at $`\overline{h}=0`$ and, for a certain range of temperatures, the potential has two local minima. The temperature for which the two minima have the same free energy is:

$$T_c=\sqrt[4]{\frac{90v^3}{2e\pi ^2}}\widehat{\mathrm{\Lambda }}.$$
(20)
This value is obtained by comparing the jump of the potential due to the temperature corrections (actually at zero $`\overline{h}`$) with the respect to the zero temperature minimum, and it does not depend on the specific value assumed by the constant $`c`$ in the effective Lagrangian. The latter can be fixed once the glueball mass is known.

Assuming that the drop in the gluon condensate together with the drastic change in the glueball mass are related to the deconfinement phase transition as supported by lattice simulations Bacilieri  we interpret Eq. (1) as an estimate for the critical temperature. In figure 2 we plot the critical temperature as function of the superconductive gap for different values of the quark chemical potential. In models where the contribution of the elementary gluons is added one finds a smaller temperature (see for example Carter:1998ti ). The reduction is due to the extra contribution of the light gluons appearing at $`T_c`$. This effect can be estimated assuming that the main contribution of the gluons at $`T_c`$ is the free energy for unconfined gluons propagating with velocity $`v`$. By simply adding to the effective thermal potential the term $`2\pi ^2\left[2(N^21)\right]T^4\mathrm{\Theta }(TT_c)/(90v^3)`$ for a general number of colors $`N`$ the temperature for which the two minima have the same free energy value is lowered to

$$T_c\frac{T_c}{\sqrt[4]{2\left(N^21\right)+1}}.$$
(21)
The reduction is perhaps too drastic since, in many investigations at zero density, it has been argued that a better fit to the Lattice data even at temperatures as high as 3 times the critical temperature requires an effective number of gluon degrees of freedom lower than the one predicted by a free gas approximation. It is then quite likely that the true critical temperature lies in between the one presented in Eq. (1) computed without gluons and the one estimated Eq. (21).

When reducing the temperature from the quark gluon plasma phase we see that color superconductivity first sets in along the temperature axis with the $`SU(2)`$ of color still unconfined and finally the $`SU(2)`$ confines at a lower value of the temperature (see Fig. 2). Higher order corrections to our critical temperature are shown to be smaller than 10% (see Carter:1998ti ).

We also see confronting the left and right panel of Fig. 2 that the critical temperature decreases if $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}`$ decreases.

Our model applies directly only to the ideal 2SC state and for physical applications we need to consider in some detail the corrections induced for example by the quark masses. Nevertheless it might be instructive to show how the explicit dependence of the $`SU(2)`$ confining temperature on $`\mu `$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ may be helpful to astrophysical applications. Indeed in a model for Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) OS  it was suggested that some compact stars might feature a hot 2SC surface layer. The GRBs model used the glueballs as an active degree of freedom. So we need to know when, along the temperature axis, the 2SC layer enters the $`SU(2)`$ confining regime. Within our model calculations we indicate in the $`T\mu `$ phase diagram where the glueballs degrees of freedom start playing a role. For example if $`\mu =400500`$ MeV from Fig. 2 we deduce that the $`SU(2)`$ confines at $`T_c10`$ MeV provided $`\mathrm{\Delta }6070`$ MeV. Our work might also be useful when investigating the cooling process in compact stars.

The derived free energy for the $`SU(2)`$ glue for very low temperatures represents an initial step when computing part of the complete equation of state which is needed when considering the thermodynamics of compact object featuring a 2SC state. In our model we have assumed the glueball velocity not to depend on the temperature. This is reasonable since the temperature corrections for $`v`$ are exponentially suppressed, more specifically the suppression factor is $`e^{\mathrm{\Delta }/T}`$ Rischke:2001py ; Litim:2001je . Since we find the critical temperature to lie well below the critical temperature for color superconductivity ($`T_{2SC}0.57\mathrm{\Delta }`$) our results provide a consistent picture. It is important to stress that for temperatures $`T_c<T<T_{2SC}`$ the gapped quark contributions are no longer negligible. In Ref. Litim:2001je  using the transport theory some relevant temperature effects have been analyzed.

It is useful to study the dependence of the glueball mass on the temperature. Defining the square of the mass as the potential curvature evaluated at the (global) minimum we observe (see Fig. 1) that for $`T<T_c`$ the curvature is practically constant and the mass square value is well approximated by $`M^2(T<T_c)=\widehat{\mathrm{\Lambda }}^2/2\sqrt{e}c`$ .

Although the glueball treatment alone cannot be used above the deconfining phase transition it is nevertheless interesting to consider such a temperature region. For $`TT_c`$ the new global minimum is at zero and we can use Eq. (18) to deduce

$`{\displaystyle \frac{M^2(TT_c)}{M^2(T=0)}}={\displaystyle \frac{\sqrt{5}}{4\pi \sqrt{v^3}}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{T}{T_c}}\right]^2.`$ (22)
Due to the velocity factor in Eq. (22) there is a relative enhancement with to the respect to the in vacuum (but hot) Yang-Mills theory. For illustration we plot our results in Fig. 3 for the in vacuum (i.e. $`v=1`$ and $`\mu =0`$) and the in medium theory for $`\mu =500`$ while considering different values of $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$.

Since the glueball mass increases in the deconfined phase the new light degrees of freedom (namely the elementary gluons themselves) now dominate the free energy. Interestingly we find that due to a large dielectric constant of the 2SC medium the associated light glueballs mass square in the deconfined region gains a factor $`1/\sqrt{v^3}`$ relative to the in vacuum case. Hence for all of the relevant thermodynamical properties/quantities of the 2SC above the deconfining $`SU(2)`$ phase transition the glueballs are not expected to play an important role. Since we plot the ratio of masses the result does not depend on the positive constant $`c`$. From the figure is also clear that there is a strong dependence on the specific value of $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$.

We now comment briefly on the fate of the old minimum as the temperature is increased above the critical temperature and in absence of elementary gluons. The value of the glueball condensate corresponding to the old minimum just above the critical temperature start reducing while the minimum disappears for a temperature of the order of $`2T_c`$. This behavior is summarized in Fig. 4 and it is a classical example of first order phase transition if we were to consider the glueball Lagrangian as the correct description at and above the transition point.

When restricting to the in vacuum theory our results are in reasonable agreement with the results and expectations of various investigations (see for example Carter:1998ti  and references therein) using similar models.

The glueball Lagrangian based model cannot be used to establish the order of the phase transition since the gluon condensate is not an order parameter for a Yang-Mills theory although it does encode information on the underlying conformal anomaly. The break down point signals the presence of new lighter degrees of freedom which needed to be taken into account. In the absence of quarks a reasonable order parameter for the $`SU(N)`$ Yang-Mills theory is the Polyakov loop Svetitsky:1982gs :

$`\mathrm{}\left(x\right)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{N}}\mathrm{Tr}(𝐋){\displaystyle \frac{1}{N}}\mathrm{Tr}\left[𝒫\mathrm{exp}\left[ig{\displaystyle _0^{1/T}}A_0(x,\tau )𝑑\tau \right]\right],`$ (23)
where $`𝒫`$ denotes path ordering, $`g`$ is the $`SU(N)`$ coupling constant and $`x`$ is the coordinate for the three spatial dimensions while $`\tau `$ is euclidean time. The $`\mathrm{}`$ field is real for $`N=2`$ while otherwise complex. This object is charged with respect to the center $`Z_N`$ of the $`SU(N)`$ gauge group Svetitsky:1982gs  under which it transforms as $`\mathrm{}z\mathrm{}`$ with $`zZ_N`$. A relevant feature of the Polyakov loop is that its expectation vanishes in the low temperature regime and is non zero in the high temperature phase.

This behavior has recently lead Pisarski Pisarski:2001pe  to model the Yang-Mills (non supersymmetric) phase transition as a mean field theory of Polyakov loops. One can simply show that for $`SU(2)`$ one expects a second order phase transition (as function of the temperature) and a weak first order for $`SU(3)`$.

We can use Pisarski’s model to predict the order of the transition in the present case. Assuming that a local $`SU(2)`$ Yang-Mills action at low energies does exists we construct the simplest Polykov loop using the rescaled space time coordinates and fields rischke2k ; OS2 :

$`\widehat{\mathrm{}}\left(x\right)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{Tr}\left[𝒫\mathrm{exp}\left[i\widehat{g}{\displaystyle _0^{1/\widehat{T}}}\widehat{A}_0(x,\widehat{\tau })𝑑\widehat{\tau }\right]\right],`$ (24)
with $`\widehat{A_0}=\widehat{A}_0^a\tau ^a/2`$ and $`\tau ^a`$ the $`SU(2)`$ Pauli matrices, and the connection with the underlying fields is rischke2k ; OS2  $`\widehat{A_0^a}=\lambda ^{\frac{1}{4}}ϵ^{\frac{3}{4}}A_0^a`$ while $`\widehat{g}=g_s(\lambda /ϵ)^{\frac{1}{4}}`$. The rescaled euclidean time $`\widehat{\tau }=\tau /\sqrt{\lambda ϵ}`$ leads to $`\widehat{T}=T/v`$ while $`\lambda `$ is a possible magnetic permeability which turns to be equal to one in our case. At this point the effective mean field type of model a lá Pisarski for $`\widehat{\mathrm{}}`$ is similar to the one for the in vacuum $`SU(2)`$ Yang-Mills theory. So if we make the strong but plausible assumption (as shown above) that all the way up and above the deconfinement $`SU(2)`$ color phase transition the effects of the quark superconductive matter can be taken into account just via a non zero dielectric constant we expect a second order phase transition for the $`SU(2)`$ of color in 2SC. It is relevant to mention that the order of the transition might change if we include new contributions arising for example by considering the quark masses. The deconfining temperature is expected to be the one close to our prediction obtained from the glueball model Lagrangian. Even if a non zero magnetic permeability exists the present argument would not be modified.

$`SU(2)`$ Yang-Mills with non zero dielectric and magnetic permeability can be simulated, using standard sampling methods, on the lattice. For a large body of work on $`SU(2)`$–Yang–Mills theory we refer to Damgaard . These results would test at the same time the validity of the glueball model for the prediction of the critical temperature and the order of the phase transition according to the Polyakov loop model in a framework slightly modified with respect to the in vacuum case. Besides the latter would also constitute the first lattice simulations testing the high quark chemical potential but small temperature region of the QCD phase diagram.

The disagreement between the first order phase transition predicted by the glueball Lagrangian and the previous argument based on the symmetries obeyed by the order parameter is an apparent one. In fact any gauge invariant quantity which is not an order parameter does not need to behave as the order parameter itself at the transition Pisarski:2001pe  as discussed at length in the introduction (see also Sannino:2002wb ).

## IV Conclusions

We studied the temperature effects on the unbroken $`SU(2)`$ color gauge interactions for the 2 flavor case at high matter density. Using a simple model based on a light glueball Lagrangian we estimated the $`SU(2)`$ deconfinement critical temperature for given chemical potential and superconductive gap value. We have shown that the deconfining/confining critical temperature is smaller than the critical temperature for the superconductive state itself. The breaking of Lorentz invariance (already at zero temperature), encoded in the glueball velocity, further reduces the critical temperature by a factor $`v^{3/4}`$ relative to the in vacuum case. By computing the glueball thermal effective potential we have the equation of state for part of the ideal 2SC phase (i.e. zero up and down quark masses and infinitely massive strange quark). In particular we can compute the pressure, the energy density and the entropy of the system.

Another relevant point is that we have developed a general framework according to which any parameterization of the glueball field can be used to construct the full thermal effective action arising from the lagrangian constructed using the anomalous variation of dilation current.

Using the Polyakov loop model, adapted to the present case we also predict the associated phase transition to be second order.

In order to apply our model to the physics of compact objects we should extend it in order to take into accounts the effects of the the up and down quark masses as well as the effects of a not too massive strange quark.

### Notes added in proof

About two months after we submitted this paper the paper Alford:2002kj  appeared where it is claimed that the 2SC state might not be present on compact stars. This is a very dynamical issue which deserves further studies. The present paper deals with the properties of part of the ideal 2SC state and as such our results are not affected by this claim. However possible astrophysical applications may be affected. Finally also Ref. Sannino:2002wb  which clarifies the relation between the order parameter and the gluon condensate further strengthening our approach appeared after this paper was submitted.

###### Acknowledgements.

It is a pleasure for us to thank R. Casalbuoni for suggesting this problem to us. We would like to thank P. Damgaard for enlightening discussions, J. Schechter for discussions and reading of the manuscript, and K. Splittorff for interesting discussions. We also acknowledge discussions with C. Manuel, R. Ouyed and O. Scavenius. The work of F.S. is supported by the Marie–Curie fellowship under contract MCFI-2001-00181, N.M. was supported by the EU Comission under contract HPMT-2000-00010 and by NORDITA, while W.S. acknowledges support by DAAD and NORDITA.


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# Optimal Investment Horizons

## Acknowledgment

We thank E. Aurell and S. Maslov for valuable comments and suggestions.


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# Constraints on Models for Proton-Proton Scattering from Multi-strange Baryon Data

## 1 Introduction

Recently, the NA49 collaboration has published  the rapidity spectra of p, $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, $`\mathrm{\Xi }`$ as well as the corresponding antibaryons in pp interactions at 158 GeV. These measurements provide new insight into the string formation process. In the string picture, high energy proton-proton collisions create “excitations” in form of strings, being one dimensional objects which decay into hadrons according to longitudinal phase space. This framework is well confirmed in low energy electron-positron annihilation  where the virtual photon decays into a quark-antiquark string which breaks up into mesons($`M`$), baryons($`B`$) and antibaryons($`\overline{B}`$). An example of a $`\mathrm{q}\overline{\mathrm{q}}`$ string fragmenting into hadrons is shown in Fig.1. Proton-proton collisions are more complicated due to the fact that even at 158 GeV proton-proton collisions are governed by soft physics, thus pQCD calculations can not be applied. And the mechanism of string formation is not clear, as will be discussed in the following.

One may distinguish two classes of string models:

* Longitudinal excitation (LE) models: UrQMD , HIJING , PYTHIA , FRITIOF ;
* Color exchange (CE) models: DPM , VENUS , QGS .

In the LE case the two colliding protons excite each other via a large transfer of momentum between projectile and target, Fig.2a. In contrast, the CE picture considers a color exchange between the incoming protons, leaving behind two octet states. Thus, a diquark from the projectile and a quark from the target, and vice versa, form color singlets. These are identified with strings, c.f. Fig.2b. The color exchange is a soft process. The transfer of momentum is negligible. The final result, two quark-diquark strings with valence quarks being their ends, however, is quite similar.

How are baryons and antibaryons produced? The easiest way to obtain baryons is to break the strings via quark-antiquark pair production close to the valence diquark. Since the ingoing proton was composed of light quarks(qqq), the resulting baryon is of qqq or qqs type. Thus nucleons, $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$s or $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$s are formed. Since these baryons are produced at the string ends, they occur mainly close to the projectile rapidity or target rapidity (leading baryons).

Multi-strange baryons which consist of two or three strange quarks are produced near the quark end or the middle of the strings, via ss-$`\overline{\mathrm{s}}\overline{\mathrm{s}}`$ production. Therefore the distributions of multi-strange baryons are peaked around central rapidity and the corresponding yields of multi-strange baryons and their antiparticles should be comparable. A closer look reveals an interesting phenomenon: Theoretically one finds the ratio of yields :

$$\overline{\mathrm{\Xi }}^+/\mathrm{\Xi }^{}=0.81.2.$$

Experimentally, however, $`\overline{\mathrm{\Xi }}^+`$s are less frequent than expected. The ratio at midrapidity is

$$\overline{\mathrm{\Xi }}^+/\mathrm{\Xi }^{}=0.44\pm 0.08.$$

The situation for $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$s is even more extreme: from string models one gets

$$\overline{\mathrm{\Omega }}^+/\mathrm{\Omega }^{}=1.61.9$$

at midrapidity. From extrapolating $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ and $`\mathrm{\Xi }`$ results (and from preliminary NA49 data) we expect

$$\overline{\mathrm{\Omega }}^+/\mathrm{\Omega }^{}=0.50.8.$$

This is a generic situation; It is impossible to get the $`\overline{\mathrm{\Omega }}^+/\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$ ratio smaller than unity from those two types of string models. As addressed in , this is due to the fact that the strings have a light quark (but not a strange quark) at the end, which disfavours multi-strange baryon production, and does not allow for $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ production in the fragmentation region.

## 2 Problems with the String Model Approach

So is there something fundamentally wrong with string models? To answer this question let us consider somewhat more in detail how string models are realized. One may present the particle production from strings via chains of quark lines  as shown in fig. 3.

It turns out that the two string picture is not enough to explain for example the large multiplicity fluctuations in proton-proton scattering at collider energies: more strings are needed, one adds therefore one or more pairs of quark-antiquark strings, as shown in fig. 4.

The variables $`x_i`$ refer to the longitudinal momentum fractions given to the string ends. Energy-momentum conservation implies $`x_i=1.`$

What is the probabilities for different string numbers? Here, Gribov-Regge theory comes at help, which tells us that the probability for a configuration with $`n`$ elementary interactions is given as

$$\mathrm{Prob}(n\mathrm{interactions})=\frac{\chi ^n}{n!}\mathrm{exp}(\chi ),$$

where $`\chi `$ is a function of energy and impact parameter, see fig. 5.

Here, a dashed vertical line represents an elementary interaction (referred to as Pomeron).

Now one identifies the elementary interactions (Pomerons) from Gribov-Regge theory with the pairs of strings (chains) in the string model, and one uses the above-mentioned probability for $`n`$ Pomerons to be the probability for configurations with $`n`$ string pairs. Unfortunately this is not at all consistent, for two reasons:

1. Whereas in the string picture the first and the subsequent pairs are of different nature, in the Gribov-Regge model all the Pomerons are identical.
2. Whereas in the string (chain) model the energy is properly shared among the strings, in the Grivov-Regge approach does not consider energy sharing at all (the $`\chi `$ is a function of the total energy only)

These problems have to be solved in order to make reliable predictions.

## 3 Basic Ideas of Parton-Based Gribov-Regge Theory

We consider a new approach called Parton-Based Gribov-Regge theory to solve the above-mentioned problems. Here we still use the language of Pomerons as in Gribov-Regge theory to calculate probabilities of collision configurations and the language of strings to treat particle production. Multiple interactions happen in parallel. An elementary interaction is referred to as Pomeron. The spectators of each proton form a remnant, see Fig. 6. A Pomeron is finally identified with two strings, see Fig.7. But we treat both aspects in a consistent fashion: *In both cases energy sharing is considered in a rigorous way**, and in both cases all Pomerons are identical.* This is the new feature of our approach, and the second point is exactly the solution to multistrange baryon problem mentioned above. In the following we discuss how to realize the collision configuration and particle production, respectively.

## 4 Collision Configuration

Gribov-Regge theory is applied in NEXUS to calculate collision configurations. This calculation is performed under the condition that *energy sharing is considered rigorous*ly. Once a collision configuration is determined, not only the number of Pomerons but also the energy sharing among Pomerons is fixed. This is different from other string models. In the following we discuss how to realize it in a qualitative fashion.

### 4.1 Reminder: some Elementary Quantum Mechanics

Let us introduce some conventions. We denote elastic two body scattering amplitudes as $`T_{22}`$ and inelastic amplitudes corresponding to the production of some final state $`X`$ as $`T_{2X}`$ (see fig.8 ).

As a direct consequence of unitarity on has $`2\mathrm{Im}T_{22}=_x`$$`(T_{2X})`$$`(T_{2X})^{}`$. The right hand side of this equation may be literally presented as a “cut diagram”, where the diagram on one side of the cut is $`(T_{2X})`$ and on the other side $`(T_{2X})^{}`$, as shown in fig.9 .

So the term “cut diagram” means nothing but the square of an inelastic amplitude, summed over all final states, which is equal to twice the imaginary part of the elastic amplitude. Based on these considerations, we introduce simple graphical symbols, which will be very convenient when discussing multiple scattering, shown in fig. 10: a vertical solid line represents an elastic amplitude (multiplied by $`i`$, for convenience), and a vertical dashed line represents the mathematical expression related to the above-mentioned cut diagram (divided by $`2s`$, for convenience).

### 4.2 Elementary Interactions

Elementary nucleon-nucleon scattering can be considered as a straightforward generalization of photon-nucleon scattering: one has a hard parton-parton scattering in the middle, and parton evolutions in both directions toward the nucleons. We have a hard contribution $`T_{\mathrm{hard}}`$ when the the first partons on both sides are valence quarks, a semi-hard contribution $`T_{\mathrm{semi}}`$ when at least on one side there is a sea quark (being emitted from a soft Pomeron), with a perturbative process happening in the middle of Pomeron, and finally we have a soft contribution when no perturbative process happens at all (see fig. 11). The total elementary elastic amplitude $`T_{22}`$ is the sum of all contributions.

The cut-off of virtuality between perturbative and non-perturbative processes, $`Q_0^2`$, is independent of the beam energy. The perturbative part of Pomeron is strictly based on the standard DGLAP evolution with ordered parton virtualities in the ladder diagram and the nonperturbative part is based on Reggeon parameterization. The semihard Pomeron is a convolution of hard and soft. The total elementary elastic amplitude $`T_{22}`$ is the sum of all these terms. Thus we have a smooth transition from soft to hard physics: at low energies the soft contribution dominates, at high energies the hard and semi-hard ones, at intermediate energies (that is where experiments are performed presently) all contributions are important.

The multiple scattering theory will be based on these elementary interactions, the corresponding elastic amplitude $`T_{22}`$ and the corresponding cut diagram, both being represented graphically by a solid and a dashed vertical line. We also refer to the solid line as Pomeron, to the dashed line as cut Pomeron.

### 4.3 Multiple Scattering

We first consider inelastic proton-proton scattering, see fig. 12. We imagine an arbitrary number of elementary interactions to happen in parallel, where an interaction may be elastic or inelastic. The inelastic amplitude is the sum of all such contributions with at least one inelastic elementary interaction involved.

To calculate cross sections, we need to square the amplitude, which leads to many interference terms, as the one shown in fig. 13(a), which represents interference between the first and the second diagram of fig. 12. Using the above notations, we may represent the left part of the diagram as a cut diagram, conveniently plotted as a dashed line, see fig. 13(b). The amplitude squared is now the sum over many such terms represented by solid and dashed lines.

When squaring an amplitude being a sum of many terms, not all of the terms interfere – only those which correspond to the same final state. For example, a single inelastic interaction does not interfere with a double inelastic interaction, whereas all the contributions with exactly one inelastic interaction interfere. So considering a squared amplitude, one may group terms together representing the same final state. In our pictorial language, this means that all diagrams with one dashed line, representing the same final state, may be considered to form a class, characterized by $`m=1`$ – one dashed line ( one cut Pomeron) – and the light cone momenta $`x^+`$ and $`x^{}`$ attached to the dashed line (defining energy and momentum of the Pomeron). In fig. 14, we show several diagrams belonging to this class, in fig. 15, we show the diagrams belonging to the class of two inelastic interactions, characterized by $`m=2`$ and four light-cone momenta $`x_1^+`$, $`x_1^{}`$, $`x_2^+`$, $`x_2^{}`$.

Generalizing these considerations, we may group all contributions with $`m`$ inelastic interactions ($`m`$ dashed lines = $`m`$ cut Pomerons) into a class characterized by the variable

$$K=\{m,x_1^+,x_1^{},\mathrm{},x_m^+,x_m^{}\}.$$

We then sum all the terms in a class $`K`$,

$$\mathrm{\Omega }(K)=\{\mathrm{all}\mathrm{terms}\mathrm{in}\mathrm{class}K\}.$$

The inelastic cross section is then simply a sum over classes,

$$\sigma _{\mathrm{inel}}(s)=\underset{K0}{}d^2b\mathrm{\Omega }(K).$$

$`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ depends implicitly on the energy squared $`s`$ and the impact parameter $`b`$. The individual terms $`d^2b\mathrm{\Omega }(K)`$, represent partial cross sections, since they represent distinct final states. They are referred to as topological cross sections. One can prove

$$\underset{K}{}\mathrm{\Omega }(K)=1,$$

which is a very important result justifying our interpretation of $`\mathrm{\Omega }(K)`$ to be a probability distribution for the configurations $`K`$. This provides also the basis for applying Monte Carlo techniques.

The function $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is the basis of all applications of this formalism. It is the foundation not only for calculating (topological) cross sections, but also for particle production, thus providing a consistent formalism for all aspects of a nuclear collision.

## 5 Particle Production

Here we discuss how to produce hadrons with any given collision configuration determined according to the above section. As we discussed above, each cut Pomeron is identified as a pair of strings. Similar to other string models, a Lorentz invariant string fragmentation procedure provides a transformation from strings to final-state hadrons in NEXUS. However the string formation mechanism in NEXUS is very different from others because Pomerons are treated identically for calculating particle production.

### 5.1 Hard Pomerons

As discussed above, each elementary interaction has hard, soft and semihard contribution. So each Pomeron has certain probabilities to be of type soft, hard and semihard. Once a collision configuration is determined according to the above section, the number of each type of Pomerons is fixed. To give a proper description of deep inelastic scattering data, hard and some of semihard Pomerons are connected to the valance quarks of the hadron. In order to conserve the initial hadron baryon content and to keep the simple factorized structure with the leading logarithmic approximation of quantum Chromodynamics, we associate a “quasi-spectator” antiquark (of the same flavour) to each valence quark interaction. So a hard Pomeron is a two-layer ladder diagram where one of them is hard with ordered virtualities and the other is soft. The hard ladder diagram gives a kinky string (each string segment has a constant velocity and finally is identified with those emitted perturbative partons). The fraction of hard Pomerons in total Pomerons is very subdominant in average proton-proton collisions. At SPS energies hard and semihard Pomerons do not contribute at all, and even at collider energies the Pomerons connected to valence quarks are rare. Therefore, even though all types of Pomerons are included in the Monte Carlo, their contribution can be ignored in the following discussion.

### 5.2 Soft Pomerons

How to form strings from soft Pomerons? No matter whether single-Pomeron exchange or multiple-Pomeron exchange happens in a proton-proton scattering, all Pomerons are treated identically. Because of this, it is a natural idea to take quarks and antiquarks from the sea as string ends, because an arbitrary number of Pomerons may be involved, and valence quarks are not always available to be string ends due to their limited amount. This point is different from the above-mentioned string models, where all the string ends are valence quarks. Letting all the valence quarks stay in remnants, thus, string ends from cut Pomerons have complete flavour symmetry and produce particles and antiparticles in equal amounts. In the old version of NEXUS used in , a sea quark and an antiquark of the same flavour have been taken from the sea as string ends to keep flavour conservation. In the new version, NEXUS 3.0, the flavours of the string ends are independent. In order to compensate the flavour, whenever a quark or an antiquark is taken from the sea as a string end, a corresponding antiparticle from the sea is put in the remnant nearby.

### 5.3 Remnant

Remnants are a new object, compared to other string models. The partonic content of a remnant is very clear: three valence quarks and the compensated partons. From this partonic structure one can estimate that its mass is of the order of proton mass. The 4-momentum of a remnant is that of an initial proton minus those being taken away by participant partons. So the 4-momenta of projectile remnant and target remnant are fixed once the collision configuration is given. The remnant mass can be calculated according to its 4-momentum and the on-shell condition, however this value of mass is not reliable. During the configuration calculation one distributes energy of order 100 GeV to Pomerons and remnants where a proton mass is negligible. We justify the remnant mass with a distribution $`P(m^2)(m^2)^\alpha `$, $`m^2(m_{\mathrm{min}}^2,x^+s)`$, where $`s`$ is the squared energy at center mass system, $`m_{\mathrm{min}}`$ is the minimum mass of hadrons to be made from the remnant’s quarks and antiquarks, and $`x^+`$ is the light-cone momentum fraction of the remnant which is determined in the collision configuration. Through fitting the data we determine the parameter $`\alpha =1.5`$. Remnants decay into hadrons according to n-body phase space.

### 5.4 Leading Order Discussion

The configuration of leading order has only one cut Pomeron. The most simple and most frequent collision configuration has two remnants and only one cut Pomeron represented by two $`\mathrm{q}\overline{\mathrm{q}}`$ strings as in Fig.16a. Besides the three valence quarks, each remnant has additionally a quarks and an antiquark to compensate the flavour.

The leg of a cut Pomeron may be of qqq type with small probability $`P_{\mathrm{qq}}`$, which means the corresponding string ends are a diquark and a quark. In this way we get quark-diquark (q-qq) strings from cut Pomerons. The qqq Pomeron leg has to be compensated by the three corresponding antiquarks in the remnant, as in Fig.16b. The (3q3$`\overline{\mathrm{q}}`$) remnant may decay into three mesons (3M) or a baryon and an anti-baryon (B+$`\overline{\mathrm{B}}`$). Since the 3M mode is favored by phase space, we neglect B+$`\overline{\mathrm{B}}`$ production here.

For symmetry reasons, the leg of a cut Pomeron is of $`\overline{\mathrm{q}}\overline{\mathrm{q}}\overline{\mathrm{q}}`$ type with the same probability $`P_{\mathrm{qq}}`$. This yields a $`\overline{\mathrm{q}}\overline{\mathrm{q}}\overline{\mathrm{q}}`$ string and a (6q) remnant, as shown in Fig.16c. The (6q) remnant decays into two baryons. Since q-qq strings and $`\overline{\mathrm{q}}\overline{\mathrm{q}}\overline{\mathrm{q}}`$ strings have the same probability to appear from cut Pomerons, baryons and antibaryons are produced equally. However, from remnant decay, baryon production is favored due to the initial valence quarks.

## 6 Results

Here, we will concentrate on baryon-antibaryon production, because there we obtain strikingly different results compared to other models. However, we carefully checked as well mesons – essentially pion and kaon rapidity and transverse momentum spectra, where the results are quite close to what we obtained earlier with NEXUS 2 or VENUS.

Fig.17 depicts the rapidity spectra of baryons and antibaryons from NEXUS 3.0 with $`P_{\mathrm{qq}}=0.02`$ (solid lines). As a comparison, we also show the preliminary data from the NA49 experiment  (points). The contributions of projectile remnants (dashed lines), target remnants (dotted lines) and cut Pomerons (dashed dotted lines) to particle production are also shown respectively in Fig.17. Fig.17 demonstrates that NEXUS 3.0 describes reasonably the rapidity spectra of baryons and antibaryons in pp collision at 158 GeV.

We also provide the particle yields at midrapidity, $`y(y_{\mathrm{cm}}0.5,y_{\mathrm{cm}}+0.5)`$, from NEXUS 3.0, Pythia 6.2 and compare them to data in table 1.

From NEXUS 3.0, we get the ratios at midrapidity

$$\overline{\mathrm{\Xi }}^+/\mathrm{\Xi }^{}=0.58,\overline{\mathrm{\Omega }}^+/\mathrm{\Omega }^{}=0.77.$$

In conclusion, it seems that old string models fail to reproduce the experimental $`\overline{\mathrm{\Xi }}^+/\mathrm{\Xi }^{}`$ and anticipated $`\overline{\mathrm{\Omega }}^+/\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$ ratio so far. The string formation mechanism as employed in NEXUS 3.0 is able to reproduce the experimental data nicely. The rapidity distributions of multi-strange baryons as well as $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$s and protons can be understood. The main point is the fact that the final result of a proton-proton scattering is a system of projectile and target remnant and in addition (at least) one Pomeron represented by two strings. At SPS energy, the soft Pomerons dominate. In general the soft Pomerons are vacuum excitation and produce particles and antiparticles equally because their string ends are sea quarks. The valence quarks stay in remnants and favour the baryon production as compared to antibaryon production.

.