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Fluctuations of conserved charges calculated on the lattice which can be measured experimentally, are well reproduced by a hadron resonanse gas model at temperatures below T_{ch} ~ 155 MeV and radically deviate from the hadron resonance gas predictions above the chiral restoration crossover. This behavior is typically interpreted as an indication of deconfinement in the quark-gluon plasma regime. We present an argument that this interpretation may be too simple. The argument is based on the scaling of quantities with the number of colors: demonstration of deconfinement and QGP requires observable that is sensitive to N_c^2 gluons while the conserved charges are sensitive only to quarks and above T_{ch} scale as N_c^1. The latter scaling is consistent with the existence of an intermediate regime characterized by restored chiral symmetry and by approximate chiral spin symmetry which is a symmetry of confining interaction. In this regime the energy density, pressure and entropy density scale as N_c^1. In the large N_c limit this regime might become a distinct phase separated from the hadron gas and from QGP by phase transitions. A natural observable that associates with deconfinement and is directly sensitive to deconfined N_c^2-1 gluons is the Polyakov loop; in the N_c=3 world it remains very close to 0 at temperatures well above chiral crossover, reaches the value 0.5 around 3T_{ch} and the value close to 1 at temperatures ~1 GeV., Comment: 5 pages; final version accepted by EPJA

Lattice studies suggest that at zero baryon chemical potential and increasing temperature there are three characteristic regimes in QCD that are connected by smooth analytical crossovers: a hadron gas regime at T < T_ch ~ 155 MeV, an intermediate regime, called stringy fluid, at T_ch < T < ~ 3 T_ch, and a quark-gluon plasma regime at higher temperatures. These regimes have been interpreted to reflect different approximate symmetries and effective degrees of freedom. In the hadron gas the effective degrees of freedom are hadrons and the approximate chiral symmetry of QCD is spontaneously broken. The intermediate regime has been interpreted as lacking spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking along with the emergence of new approximate symmetry, chiral spin symmetry, that is not a symmetry of the Dirac Lagrangian, but is a symmetry of the confining part of the QCD Lagrangian. While the high temperature regime is the usual quark-gluon plasma which is often considered to reflect "deconfinement" in some way. This paper explores the behavior of these regimes of QCD as the number of colors in the theory, N_c, gets large. In the large N_c limit the theory is center-symmetric and notions of confinement and deconfinement are unambiguous. The energy density is O(N_c^0) in the meson gas, O(N_c^1) in the intermediate regime and O(N_c^2) in the quark-gluon plasma regime. In the large N_c limit these regimes may become distinct phases separated by first order phase transitions. The intermediate phase has the peculiar feature that glueballs should exist and have properties that are unchanged from what is seen in the vacuum (up to 1/N_c corrections), while the ordinary dilute gas of mesons with broken chiral symmetry disappears and approximate chiral spin symmetry should emerge., Comment: 10 pages. Final version accepted by EPJA

The last few years have been witness to a proliferation of new results concerning heavy exotic hadrons. Experimentally, many new signals have been discovered that could be pointing towards the existence of tetraquarks, pentaquarks, and other exotic configurations of quarks and gluons. Theoretically, advances in lattice field theory techniques place us at the cusp of understanding complex coupled-channel phenomena, modelling grows more sophisticated, and effective field theories are being applied to an ever greater range of situations. It is thus an opportune time to evaluate the status of the field. In the following, a series of high priority experimental and theoretical issues concerning heavy exotic hadrons is presented., Comment: White paper from INT workshop, "Modern Exotic Hadrons". References added. Version to appear in Chinese Physics C

We highlight the progress, current status, and open challenges of QCD-driven physics, in theory and in experiment. We discuss how the strong interaction is intimately connected to a broad sweep of physical problems, in settings ranging from astrophysics and cosmology to strongly-coupled, complex systems in particle and condensed-matter physics, as well as to searches for physics beyond the Standard Model. We also discuss how success in describing the strong interaction impacts other fields, and, in turn, how such subjects can impact studies of the strong interaction. In the course of the work we offer a perspective on the many research streams which flow into and out of QCD, as well as a vision for future developments., Comment: 246 pp, around 128 figures; v2 adds material, references, and corrections suggested by readers of v1 -- to be submitted to EPJC

It has recently been suggested that the parity doublet structure seen in the spectrum of highly excited baryons may be due to effective chiral symmetry restoration for these states. We review the recent developments in this field. We demonstrate with a simple quantum-mechanical example that it is a very natural property of quantum systems that a symmetry breaking effect which is important for the low-lying spectrum of the system, can become unimportant for the highly-lying states; the highly lying states reveal a multiplet structure of nearly degenerate states. Using the well established concepts of quark-hadron duality, asymptotic freedom in QCD and validity of the operator product expansion in QCD we show that the spectral densities obtained with the local currents that are connected to each other via chiral transformations, very high in the spectrum must coincide. Hence effects of spontaneous breaking of chiral symmetry in QCD vacuum that are crucially important for the low-lying spectra, become irrelevant for the highly-lying states. Then to the extent that identifiable hadronic resonances still exist in the continuum spectrum at high excitations this implies that the highly excited hadrons must fall into multiplets associated with the representations of the chiral group. We demonstrate that this is indeed the case for meson spectra in the large $N_c$ limit. All possible parity-chiral multiplets are classified for baryons and it is demonstrated that the existing data on highly excited $N$ and $\Delta$ states at masses of 2 GeV and higher is consistent with approximate chiral symmetry restoration. However new experimental studies are needed to achieve any definitive conclusions., Comment: 30 pages, LaTeX . Review commissioned by Int. J. of Mod. Phys. A

It has recently been suggested that the parity doublet structure seen in the spectrum of highly excited baryons may be due to effective chiral restoration for these states. We argue how the idea of chiral symmetry restoration high in the spectrum is consistent with the concept of quark-hadron duality. If chiral symmetry is effectively restored for highly-lying states, then the baryons should fall into representations of $SU(2)_L\times SU(2)_R$ that are compatible with the given parity of the states - the parity-chiral multiplets. We classify all possible parity-chiral multiplets: (i) $(1/2,0)\oplus(0, 1/2)$ that contain parity doublet for nucleon spectrum;(ii) $(3/2,0) \oplus (0, 3/2)$ consists of the parity doublet for delta spectrum; (iii) $(1/2,1) \oplus (1, 1/2)$ contains one parity doublet in the nucleon spectrum and one parity doublet in the delta spectrum of the same spin that are degenerate in mass. Here we show that the available spectroscopic data for nonstrange baryons in the $\sim$ 2 GeV range is consistent with all possibilities, but the approximate degeneracy of parity doublets in nucleon and delta spectra support the latter possibility with excited baryons approximately falling into $(1/2,1) \oplus (1, 1/2)$ representation of $SU(2)_L\timesSU(2)_R$ with approximate degeneracy between positive and negative parity $N$ and $\Delta$ resonances of the same spin., Comment: RevTeX, 6 pages. The paper has been expanded in order to make the idea of chiral symmetry restoration as it follows from the concept of quark-hadron duality more transparent. To appear in Phys. Rev. D