Effective nucleon mass and thermodynamics in the quark-meson coupling model.

Abstract

In this work, we study the quark energy spectrum in an MIT bag using the quark-meson coupling model. In particular, thermal distribution functions of quarks at finite temperature are explicitly incorporated into the calculations. It is found that when temperature is less than 50 MeV, the probability for a quark to occupy an exciting state is very rare and negligible, therefore the corresponding contributions to the thermodynamic potential undermean-field theory are strongly suppressed. In this context, if one calculates other physical quantities derived from thermodynamic potential, effects due to quark distribution functions are also likely to be unimportant.