Quark–gluon plasma and topological quantum field theory

Abstract

Based on an analogy with topologically ordered new state of matter in condensed matter systems, we propose a low energy effective field theory for a parity conserving liquid-like quark–gluon plasma (QGP) around critical temperature in quantum chromodynamics (QCD) system. It shows that below a QCD gap which is expected several times of the critical temperature, the QGP behaves like topological fluid. Many exotic phenomena of QGP near the critical temperature discovered at Relativistic Heavy Ion Collision (RHIC) are more readily understood by the suggestion that QGP is a topologically ordered state.