# Antibaryon density in the central rapidity region of a heavy-ion collision

## Discussion

We found negligible (anti-)baryons density (of order $`10^4\text{antibaryons}/\text{fm}^3`$) after the chiral symmetry phase transition in quark-gluon plasma at zero baryon chemical potential. The (anti-)baryon density suppression results from the initial condition of the order parameter which is in thermal equilibrium at the critical point and from the non zero light quark masses which substantially bias these initial conditions. The probability of the topological defect formation is exponentialy supressed by the explicit symmetry breaking parameter present in the free energy describing the phase transition. This is the main source of discrepancy between our prediction and that of Ellis, Kowalski and Heinz .

We assume that the chiral fields are relevant degrees of freedom in the vicinity of critical temperature and that the transition is a smooth crossover. We expect that even in the case of the first order phase transition (resulting from the strange quark mass and/or nonzero baryon chemical potential) symmetry breaking bias would be strong enough to suppress baryon production. This issue deserves a more careful investigation.

Our result may overestimate the (anti-)baryon density. As the chiral fields cool down the skyrmions can unwind through the top of the sombrero potential. This process lasts until the system cools down to its Ginzburg temperature and can vastly decimate the defects. This further reduction takes place if unwinding is not forbiden. However, according to Holzwarth the unwinding must be forbiden for the sake of baryon number conservation. In his model  the $`(\sigma ,\stackrel{}{\pi })=(0,\stackrel{}{0})`$ point is removed from the configuration space of the linear sigma model. In this case our estimate is accurate.

The result of our calculation leads us to the conclusion that hardly any baryons will be produced in the central rapidity region of a heavy ion collision.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank A. Bialas, W. Czyz, G. Holzwarth, K. Zalewski and W.H. Zurek for stimulating discussions. J.D. was supported by the KBN grant 2 P03B 008 15 and M.S. was supported by the KBN grant 2 P03B 086 14.

Fig.1. $`\sigma _0(T)=<\sigma >_T`$ \[MeV\] as a function of temperature \[MeV\] for the linear $`\sigma `$ model with the effective $`A_{eff}(T)=A(1T/T_{ch})`$ and $`T_{ch}=160\text{MeV}`$. 

Fig.2. Temperature \[MeV\] dependence of the $`\sigma `$ (top) and $`\pi `$ (bottom) masses \[MeV\] under the same model assumptions as in Fig.1.

Fig.3. The effective potential $`V_{eff}(\sigma ,\stackrel{}{0})`$ \[MeV<sup>4</sup>\] as a function of $`\sigma `$ \[MeV\] at $`T=T_{ch}`$ (top) and at $`T=0`$ (bottom) - bold lines. The gaussian distribution of $`\overline{\sigma }`$ at $`T_{ch}`$ \- thin line.