A schematic model for QCD II: finite temperature regime

Abstract

A schematic model for QCD, developed in a previous paper, is applied to calculate meson properties in the high temperature (up to 0.5 GeV) regime. It is a Lipkin model for quark-antiquark pairs coupled to gluon pairs of spin zero. The partition function is constructed with the obtained meson spectrum and several thermodynamical observables are calculated, like: the energy density, heat capacity, as well as relative production rates of mesons and absolute production rates for pions and kaons. The model predictions show a qualitative agreement with data. Based on these results we advocate the use of the model as a toy model for QCD.