Real-time description of parton-hadron conversion and confinement dynamics

We advocate a new approach to the hadronization problem that incorporates both perturbative QCD and effective field theory in their respective domains of validity and that models the transition between them using ideas developed in phenomenological descriptions of the finite temperature transitions from a quark-gluon plasma to a hadronic phase. The latter is described by an effective theory that incorporates a chiral field U whose vacuum expectation value (vev) U0 ≡ left angle 0vertical stroke U + U+vertical stroke 0 right angle represents the quark condensate left angle 0vertical stroke anti qqvertical stroke 0 right angle , and a scalar field χ whose vev χ0 ≡ left angle 0vertical stroke χvertical stroke 0 right angle represents the gluon condensate left angle 0vertical stroke FμνFμνvertical stroke 0 right angle . We visualize high energy processes such as jet production as producing a ''hot spot'' in which the long range order represented by U0 and χ0 is disrupted locally by the appearance of a bubble of the naive perturbative vacuum in which left angle 0vertical stroke anti qqvertical stroke 0 right angle = 0 = left angle 0vertical stroke FμνFμνvertical stroke 0 right angle . Within this bubble, a parton shower develops in the usual perturbative way, with the hot spot expanding and cooling in an irregular stochastic manner described by QCD transport equations. (orig.)