Towards thermodynamical consistency of quasiparticle picture

The purpose of the present article is to call attention to some realistic quasiparticle-based description of the quark/gluon matter and its consistent implementation in thermodynamics. A simple and transparent representation of the thermodynamical consistency conditions is given. This representation allows one to review critically and systemize available phenomenological approaches to the deconfinement problem with respect to their thermodynamical consistency. A particular attention is paid to the development of a method for treating the string screening in the dense matter of unbound color charges. The proposed method yields an integrable effective pair potential which can be incorporated into the mean-field picture. The results of its application are in reasonable agreement with lattice data on the QCD thermodynamics. PACS numbers: 24.85.+p, 12.38.Aw, 12.38.Mh, 21.65.+f, 64.60.-i 1 Permanent address: Bogoliubov Laboratory of Theoretical Physics, Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, 141980 Dubna, Russia