Eur. Phys. J. C (2007) 52: 187-201
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-007-0368-6

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

Thermal hadronization and Hawking–Unruh radiation in QCD

¹ Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Catania, and INFN Sezione di Catania, Via Santa Sofia 64, 95123, Catania, Italy
² Physics Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY, 11973-5000, USA
³ Fakultät für Physik, Universität Bielefeld, 33501, Bielefeld, Germany

^* e-mail: kharzeev@bnl.gov

Received: 13 April 2007
Revised: 16 June 2007
Published online: 27 July 2007

Abstract

We conjecture that, because of color confinement, the physical vacuum forms an event horizon for quarks and gluons, which can be crossed only by quantum tunneling, i.e., through the QCD counterpart of Hawking radiation at black holes. Since such radiation cannot transmit information to the outside, it must be thermal, of a temperature determined by the chromodynamic force at the confinement surface, and it must maintain color neutrality. We explore the possibility that the resulting process provides a common mechanism for thermal hadron production in high energy interactions, from e⁺e^- annihilation to heavy ion collisions.