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Updated: Aug 17, 2026

Non-equilibrium Microwave Plasma for Efficient High Temperature Chemistry
Published on: August 1, 2017
The hot nonperturbative gluon plasma is an almost ideal colored liquid
1Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Giessen, 35392 Giessen, Germany.
Abstract:
We study properties of a gluon plasma above the critical temperature Tc in a generalized quasiparticle approach with a Lorentz spectral function. The model parameters are determined by a fit of the entropy s to lattice QCD data. The effective degrees of freedom are found to be rather heavy and of a sizable width. With the spectral width being closely related to the interaction rate, we find a large effective cross section, which is comparable to the typical distance squared of the quasiparticles. This suggests that the system should be viewed as a liquid as also indicated by an estimate of the plasma parameter Gamma. Furthermore, within the quasiparticle approach we find a very low viscosity to entropy ratio, eta/s approximately 0.2 for T > 1.05 Tc, supporting the recent conjecture of an almost ideal quark-gluon liquid seen at RHIC.
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