https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/s10050-026-01808-5
Invited Viewpoint and Perspective
Emergent chiral spin symmetry, non-perturbative dynamics and thermoparticles in hot QCD
ITP, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Max-von-Laue-Str. 1, 60438, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
a
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Received:
22
December
2025
Accepted:
3
February
2026
Published online:
13
March
2026
Abstract
Several non-perturbative results for hot QCD are challenging some aspects of the phase diagram and its associated degrees of freedom which were previously believed to be well understood. With increasing temperature, the chiral crossover is followed by an intermediate region with an approximate chiral spin symmetry larger than chiral symmetry, in which pseudo-scalar mesons continue to exist as hadron-like excitations, before at some higher temperature the expected chiral symmetry is recovered. By testing general formal considerations against lattice data, it can be shown that thermally modified versions of stable vacuum particles, so-called thermoparticles, form the constituents of thermal quantum field theories, with properties quite different from what is expected perturbatively. This “viewpoint” aims to raise broader and, in particular, phenomenological interest in these directions.
Communicated by Ulf Meissner.
© The Author(s) 2026
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