Parton-hadron-string dynamics: An off-shell transport approach for relativistic energies

The dynamics of partons, hadrons and strings in relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions is analyzed within the novel Parton-Hadron-String Dynamics (PHSD) transport approach, which is based on a Dynamical QuasiParticle Model (DQPM) for partons matched to reproduce recent lattice-QCD results - including the partonic equation of state - in thermodynamic equilibrium. Scalar- and vector-interaction densities are extracted from the DQPM as well as effective scalar- and vector-mean fields for the partons. The transition from partonic to hadronic degrees of freedom is described by covariant transition rates for the fusion of quark-antiquark pairs or three quarks (antiquarks), respectively, obeying flavor current-conservation, color neutrality as well as energy-momentum conservation. Since the dynamical quarks and antiquarks become very massive close to the phase transition, the formed resonant 'pre-hadronic' color-dipole states (q (q) over bar or qqq) are of high invariant mass, too, and sequentially decay to the groundstate meson and baryon octets increasing the total entropy. The PHSD approach is applied to nucleus-nucleus collisions from 20 to 160 A GeV in order to explore the space-time regions of 'partonic matter'. We find that even central collisions at the top-SPS energy of 158 A GeV show a large fraction of non-partonic, i.e. hadronic or stringlike matter, which can be viewed as a hadronic corona. This finding implies that neither hadronic nor only partonic 'models' can be employed to extract physical conclusions in comparing model results with data. On the other hand - studying in detail Pb + Pb reactions from 40 to 158 A GeV - we observe that the partonic phase has a very low impact on rapidity distributions of hadrons but a sizeable influence on the transverse mass distribution of final kaons due to the repulsive partonic mean fields. Furthermore, we find a significant effect on the production of multi-strange antibaryons due to a slightly enhanced s (s) over bar pair production in the partonic phase from massive time-like gluon decay and a larger formation of antibaryons in the hadronization process. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V.. All rights reserved.