Baryon Anomaly in Heavy-Ion Collisions and Colour Correlations in QGP

A baryon anomaly – an increased baryon-to-meson production ratio at intermediate pT in heavyion collisions when compared to pp collisions – is observed at RHIC and the LHC. This effect is usually explained by recombination of constituent quarks during QGP hadronization, or as a consequence of a strong radial flow developed during the heavy-ion collision. In this contribution, an additional mechanism to favour baryon over meson production is proposed: when hadrons are formed in the recombination of nearby quarks and antiquarks, only colour-singlet combinations can be chosen. Hadron formation, in particular the probability to create baryons or mesons, depends on the distribution of colour charges among quarks. If the distribution is random – a reasonable assumption for Quark–Gluon Plasma (QGP) – the baryon-to-meson ratio is nearly twice higher than in the situation where quark colours are pre-arranged to obtain a white hadron in the combination of nearest quarks and antiquarks. The correlation of colour charges in the QGP also influences the distance over which recombination occurs. A study of the dependence of the baryon-to-meson ratio on the size of the colour correlation domain is presented.