Gluonic profile of the static baryon at finite temperature

Abstract

The gluon flux distribution of a static three quark system has been revealed at finite temperature in the pure SU(3) Yang-Mills theory. An action density operator is correlated with three Polyakov loops representing the baryonic state at a temperatures near the end of the QCD plateau, T/T_c = 0.8, and another just before the deconfinement point, T/T_c = 0.9. The flux distributions at short distance separations between the quarks display an action-density profile consistent with a filled Delta shape iso-surface. However the Delta-shaped action iso-surface distributions are found to persist even at large inter-quark separations for both temperatures. The action density distribution in the quark plane exhibits a nonuniform pattern for all quark separations considered. This result contrasts the well-known Y-shaped uniform action density gluonic-flux profile obtained using the Wilson-loop as a quark source operator at zero temperature. We systematically measure and compare the main aspects of the profile of the flux distribution at the two considered temperature scales for three sets of isosceles triangle quark configurations. The radii, amplitudes and rate of change of the width of the flux distribution are found to reverse their behavior as the temperature increase from the end of the QCD plateau region towards the deconfinement point. Remarkably, we find the mean square width of the flux distribution shrinks and localizes for quark separations larger than 1.0 fm at T/T_c = 0.8 which results in an identifiable Y-shaped radius profile. Near the deconfinement point, the action-density delocalizes and the width broadens linearly at large quark separations.