Thermal Hadronization, Hawking-Unruh Radiation and Event Horizon in QCD

Abstract

Because of colour confinement, the physical vacuum forms an event horizon for quarks and gluons; this can be crossed only by quantum tunneling, i.e., through the QCD counterpart of Hawking radiation by black holes. Since such radiation cannot transmit information to the outside, it must be thermal, of a temperature determined by the strong force at the confinement surface, and it must maintain colour neutrality. The resulting process provides a common mechanism for thermal hadron production in high energy interactions, from $e^+e^-$ annihilation to heavy ion collisions. The analogy with black-hole event horizon suggests a dependence of the hadronization temperature on the baryon density.