Pion condensation during the hadronization of the quark-gluon plasma in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions.

Abstract

Using a simple kinetic model we study whether a pion condensate can be formed during the hadronization of the quark-gluon plasma in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions. If hadronization proceeds fast and the pion effective mass is close to zero, some pions condense into the zero momentum state. On the other hand, for the pion effective mass equal to the vacuum one or larger no onset of the Bose-Einstein condensation is observed. The constraints on the condensation process coming from the requirement of the entropy increase are discussed in detail.