1. Research project objectives/ Research hypothesis

The statistical ensemble of hadrons produced in high energy collisions appears chemically and thermally equilibrated with well defined freezeout parameters
(T_fo , μ_fo ) although there is not sufficient time between creation and freezeout for equilibration by collisions within a standard kinetic equation approach. A quantum kinetic approach shall be developed to provide insight why the thermal nature of the hadron gas can be explained as a Hawking-Unruh radiation produced by the Schwinger mechanism in the presence of confining interactions and the chemical freezeout as a Mott-Anderson localization.

2. Research project methodology

We formulate and investigate chirally invariant transport equations for quark matter including (A) particle production within the dynamical Schwinger mechanism in collective (confining) meanfields, (B) strong off-shell correlations in the continuum to address resonance-resonance scattering, and (C ) resonance to bound state transition (localization) as a mechanism for chemical freeze-out. The problem concerns fundamental aspects of Theoretical Physics, such as the nature of the quantum vacuum, quantum condensates, quantum phase transitions and the transition from quantum to classical. For its solution we shall develop a description using nonequilibrium quantum field theories and quantum statistics in the nonperturbative domain of strong correlation physics with the main focus on bound state formation and dissociation under the influence of phase space occupation effects and strong collective fields.

3. Expected impact of the research project on the development of science, civilization and society

Modern high-energy collision experiments at the LHC, the RHIC and in near future at FAIR, NICA and at J- PARC provide a huge amount of high quality data on hadron production which require profound theoretical concepts for their proper interpretation and the elucidation of the underlying physical principles, the main goal for which these experiments were designed. There is compelling evidence that spectra and composition of the ensemble of produced hadrons in these experiments can be described within a simple statistical model of independent hadronic resonances with their masses and decay properties as in free space and just two freezeout parameters: temperature T fo and chemical potential μ fo . The success of this simple model appears presently as a puzzle to be explained. Another unexplained mystery is the successful application of advanced concepts of string theory such as AdS/CFT correspondence to the physics of ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions, including the interpretation of the T fo as a Hawking-Unruh temperature. It is of utmost importance for the understanding of present and future experiments at the forefront of particle physics to work out a connection between these observations and the systematic approach of nonequilibrium quantum statistics and quantum field theory. The solution of the problem to explain the thermal origin of the distribution of particles produced from the vacuum in superstrong fields is of fundamental interest also in other branches of basic science such as the Theoretical and Experimental Physics of high-intensity laser facilities such as the European Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI). It touches at least two topics of Theoretical Physics for which Nobel prizes are expected to be awarded as soon as experimental evidence will be provided: Hawking-Unruh radiation and the Schwinger mechanism of particle production.