Gluonic profile of static baryon at finite temperature and the Y baryonic string

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 temperature near the end of the QCD plateau, T/Tc ≈ 0.8, and another just before the deconfinement point, T/Tc ≈ 0.9. The flux distributions display an action-density profile consistent with a filled D shape iso-surface that persists even at large inter-quark separations for both temperatures. The profile of the baryonic gluonic distribution is compared with the width of the Y-string picture’s fluctuations. The comparison reveals that when the distance between at least two quarks is large the best fits are for quantum fluctuations of a Y-shaped baryonic string with the classical junction’s position at the Fermat point. This result supports the view that the D shape emerges through the fluctuations of underlying Y-shaped string-like flux tubes.