The cool potential of gluons

Abstract

We put forward the idea that the quark-gluon plasma might exist way below the usual confinement temperature $T_c$. Our argument rests on the possibility that the plasma produced in heavy-ion collisions could reach a transient quasi-equilibrium with `over-occupied' gluon density, as advocated by Blaizot et al. Taking further into account that gluons acquire an effective mass by interaction effects, they can have a positive chemical potential and therefore behave similarly to non-relativistic bosons. Relevant properties of this dense state of interacting gluons, which we dub serried glue, can then be inferred on rather general grounds from Maxwell's relation.