BARYON DENSITY CORRELATIONS IN THE QUARK PLASMA

As part of an ongoing effort to characterize the high temperature phase of QCD, we measure the quark baryon density in the vicinity of a fixed test quark and compare it with similar measurements at low temperature and at the crossover temperature. Such an observable has also been studied by the Vienna group. We find an extremely weak correlation at high temperature, suggesting that small color singlet clusters are unimportant in the thermal ensemble. We also find that at T = 0.75T(c) the induced quark number shows a surprisingly large component attributable to baryonic screening. A simulation of a simple flux tube model produces results that suggest a plausible scenario: As the crossover temperature is approached from below, baryonic states proliferate. Above the crossover temperature the mean size of color singlet clusters grows explosively, resulting in an effective electrostatic deconfinement.