Nature of Chiral Transition in QCD and Sigma Meson

Abstract

After showing the characteristic features of the chiral transition in QCD at finite temperature $T$, we note the significance of the sigma-mesonic mode in the chiral transition : Sigma meson may be regarded as the "Higgs particle" in QCD, though the existence of such a mode in the real world is still unclear. We show the properties of the sigma meson in hot and/or hadronic matter, from which we propose experiments to reveal the existence the sigma meson clearly; the experiments include relativistic heavy-ion collisions to create hot hadronic matter, and electro-production in heavy nuclei.