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Color deconfinement and chiral-symmetry restoration have long been predicted by QCD theory. Color deconfinement in the form of a nearly perfect fluid of quarks was reported by all four RHIC experiments in 2005. In a December 2024 paper, the PHENIX Collaboration details two-pion Lévy-stable Bose-Einstein correlation data in Au+Au collisions at the top RHIC energy and reports a significant reduction of the mass of the 𝜂′ meson in hot and dense hadronic, color-confining matter. This implies an indirect observation of a second transition in QCD by the return of the so-called prodigal Goldstone boson—a specific kind of partial chiral-symmetry restoration—and calls for further, challenging experimental studies, aiming at direct measurements of identified 𝜂′ spectra in high-energy heavy-ion collisions.
Reference:
N. J. Abdulameer et al. (PHENIX Collaboration)
Phys. Rev. C 110, 064909 (2024)
