We calculate the medium dilepton yield from a quark-gluon plasma which has a time-dependent local momentum-space anisotropy. A phenomenological model for the hard momentum scale, p_hard(tau), and plasma anisotropy parameter, xi(tau), is constructed which interpolates between free streaming behavior at early times (tau << tau_iso) and ideal hydrodynamic behavior at late times (tau >> tau_iso). We show that high-energy dilepton production is sensitive to the assumed plasma isotropization time, tau_iso, and can therefore be used to experimentally determine the time of onset for hydrodynamic expansion of a quark-gluon plasma and the magnitude of expected early-time momentum-space anisotropies.
A calculation of the thermal quark propagator is presented taking the gluon condensate above the critical temperature into account. The quark dispersion relation and the dilepton production following from this propagator are derived.
The dilepton production rate from the quark-gluon plasma is calculated from the imaginary part of the photon self energy using a quark propagator that contains the gluon condensate. The low mass dilepton rate obtained in this way exhibits interesting structures (peaks and gaps), which might be observable at RHIC and LHC.
We compute dilepton production from the deconfined phase of the quark-gluon plasma using leading-order (3+1)-dimensional anisotropic hydrodynamics. The anisotropic hydrodynamics equa- tions employed describe the full spatiotemporal evolution of the transverse temperature, spheroidal momentum-space anisotropy parameter, and the associated three-dimensional collective flow of the matter. The momentum-space anisotropy is also taken into account in the computation of the dilepton production rate, allowing for a self-consistent description of dilepton production from the quark-gluon plasma. For our…
Assuming that rho-mesons exist in a quark-gluon plasma close to the QCD phase transition, we calculate the dilepton production rate from quark-antiquark annihilation via a rho-meson state using Vector Meson Dominance. The result is compared to the rates from direct quark-antiquark annihilation and from pion annihilation. Furthermore we discuss the suppression of low mass dileptons if the quarks assume an effective mass in the quark-gluon plasma.
Assuming that gluon condensates are important even above the deconfining phase transition, we develop a model for the dilepton yield from a quark gluon plasma. Using a simple fire ball description of a heavy ion collision, and various estimates of the strengths of the gluon condensates, we compare our predicted dilepton yields with those observed in the CERES and HELIOS experiments at CERN. The simple model gives an adequate description of the data, and in particular it explains the observed considerable enhancement of the yield in the low mass region.
We study the lightlike and timelike R-current correlators in the AdS-Vaidya spacetime, which are associated with the production of prompt photons and dileptons from a nonequilibrium, rapidly thermalizing, and strongly coupled plasma in the AdS/CFT correspondence. In particular, we focus on the photon production. We find that the amplitude of the photon-emission spectrum increases during the thermalization of the medium. Also, the time-dependent emission rate for hard photons has an oscillatory pattern and thermalizes faster than soft photons.
We calculate the yield and elliptic flow of mid-rapidity dileptons emitted from the quark-gluon plasma generated in Pb-Pb collisions at LHC. We use relativistic anisotropic hydrodynamics for the 3+1 dimensional evolution of the quark-gluon plasma and convolve this with the momentum-anisotropic local rest frame production rate for dileptons. The effects of momentum anisotropy of the quark distribution functions, viscosity to entropy density ratio, centrality of the collisions, and initial momentum anisotropy on the results are investigated and discussed.
We investigate the effects of a baryon-antibaryon asymmetry on the spectrum of dileptons radiating from a quark gluon plasma. We demonstrate the existence of a new set of processes in this regime. The dilepton production rate from the corresponding diagrams is shown to be as important as that obtained from the usual quark-antiquark annihilation.
Dilepton production from the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) phase of ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions is computed using the leading-order (3+1)-dimensional anisotropic hydrodynamics. It is shown that high-energy dilepton spectrum is sensitive to the initial local-rest-frame momentum-space anisotropy of the QGP. Our findings suggest that it may be possible to constrain the early-time momentum-space anisotropy in relativistic heavy-ion collisions using high-energy dilepton yields.
It has been predicted that dilepton production may be used as a quark-gluon plasma probe. We calculate the rapidity distributions of thermal dileptons produced by an evolving quark-gluon plasma assuming a longitudinal scaling expansion with initial conditions locally determined from the hadronic rapidity density. These distributions are compared with Drell-Yan production and semileptonic charm decays at invariant mass $M = 2$, 4, and 6 GeV.
The observational consequences of certain broken symmetries in a thermalised quark gluon plasma are elucidated. The signature under study is the spectrum of dileptons radiating from the plasma, through gluon fusion. Being a pure medium effect, this channel is non-vanishing only in plasmas with explicitly broken charge conjugation invariance. The emission rates are also sensitive to rotational invariance through the constraints imposed by Yang's theorem. This theorem is interpreted in the medium via the destructive interference between various multiple scattering diagrams obtained in the specta…
Under very general assumptions we show that the quark dispersion relation in the quark-gluon plasma is given by two collective branches, of which one has a minimum at a non-vanishing momentum. This general feature of the quark dispersion relation leads to structures (van Hove singularities, gaps) in the low mass dilepton production rate, which might provide a unique signature for the quark-gluon plasma formation in relativistic heavy ion collisions.
The resummation technique of Braaten and Pisarski is used for a complete calculation of the $α^2 α_s$-contribution to the production rate of dileptons with energy E >> T and invariant mass M <~ T from a quark-gluon plasma. In particular the cancellation of the infrared singularity by medium effects is discussed in detail.
In a recent Letter, Geiger presents calculations of the dilepton emission from the early stage of ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions using the parton cascade model (PCM). He shows that the $M_\perp$ scaling is not observed. In this Comment, we point out that this is largely due to a defect in the PCM.
We discuss dilepton production from a quark-gluon plasma which has a time-dependent anisotropy in momentum space. A phenomenological model for the hard momentum scale, p_hard(tau) and the plasma anisotropy parameter, xi(tau), is presented. The model interpolates between early-time 1+1 free streaming behavior (tau << tau_iso) and late-time ideal 1+1 hydrodynamical behavior (tau >> tau_iso). Using this model, we find that the dilepton rate arising from electromagnetic annihilations of quarks in the kinematic range 3 <p_T< 8 GeV is sensitive to the assumed isotropization time of the system, tau_i…
We calculate leading-order medium photon and dilepton yields from a quark-gluon plasma using (3+1)-dimensional anisotropic hydrodynamics. In the case of dileptons, at leading-order it is sufficient to take into account non-equilibrium corrections to the rate through the use of anisotropic distribution functions. In the case of photons, non-equilibrium corrections to the rate are taken into account using a self-consistent modification of the distribution functions and the corresponding anisotropic hard-loop quark self-energies. We present predictions for the high-energy photon and dilepton spec…
We calculate the production of large mass dileptons from the jet-dilepton conversion in the expanding quark-gluon plasma at Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and Large Hadron Collider (LHC) energies. The jet-dilepton conversion exceeds the thermal dilepton production and Drell-Yan process in the large mass region of 3.9 GeV$<M<$5.8 GeV and 6.3 GeV$<M<$8.7 GeV in central Pb+Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$=2.76 TeV and 5.5 TeV, respectively. We present the numerical solution of ideal fluid hydrodynamics. We find that the transverse flow leads to a rapid cooling of the fire ball. The suppre…
Using the Landau-level representation for the imaginary part of the photon polarization tensor, we derive an explicit expression for the dilepton production rate from a hot quark-gluon plasma in a quantizing background magnetic field. We study in detail the dependence of the production rate on the dilepton invariant mass and the transverse momentum at mid-rapidity. We also investigate the angular dependence and ellipticity of dilepton emission. By comparing the result with the zero-field Born approximation, we find that the magnetic field leads to a strong enhancement of the dilepton rate at s…
The dilepton production by the constituents of the strongly interacting quark-gluon-plasma (sQGP) is addressed. In order to make quantitative predictions at realistically low plasma temperatures (O(T_c)), experimentally relevant low dilepton mass (O(1 GeV)) and strong coupling (alphaS=0.5-1), we take into account not only the higher order pQCD reaction mechanisms, but also the non-perturbative spectral functions (off-shellness) and self-energies of the quarks, anti-quarks and gluons thus going beyond the leading twist. For this purpose, our calculations utilize parametrizations of the non-pert…
We investigate thermalization of gluons in spatially homogeneous systems using the Boltzmann equation in diffusion approximation. A complete picture on thermalization is obtained for both initially under- and over-populated systems. In an initially under-populated system, we find that its soft sector undergoes three stages: overheating, cooling/overcooling and reheating before full thermalization is achieved. In an initially over-populated system, we find that its soft sector only undergoes two stages towards full thermalization: overheating and cooling. The cooling stage is consistently drive…
We determine the out-of-equilibrium production rate of dileptons at rest in strongly coupled N=4 Super Yang-Mills plasma using the AdS/CFT correspondence. Thermalization is achieved via the gravitational collapse of a thin shell of matter in AdS_5 space and the subsequent formation of a black hole, which we describe in a quasistatic approximation. Prior to thermalization, the dilepton spectral function is observed to oscillate as a function of frequency, but the amplitude of the oscillations decreases when thermal equilibrium is approached. At the same time, we follow the flow of the quasinorm…
We study the thermalization of gluons far from thermal equilibrium in relativistic kinetic theory. The initial distribution of gluons is assumed to resemble that in the early stage of ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions. Only elastic scatterings in static, nonexpanding gluonic matter are considered. At first we show that the occurrence of condensation in the limit of vanishing particle mass requires a general constraint for the scattering matrix element. Then the thermalization of gluons with Bose-Einstein condensation is demonstrated in a transport calculation. We see a continuously increa…
We calculate the production of large mass dileptons from the passage of jets passing through the quark-gluon plasma. Using the relativistic kinetic theory, we rigorously derive the production rate for the jet-dilepton conversion in the hot medium. The jet-dilepton conversion is compared with the thermal dilepton emission and the Drell-Yan process. The contribution of the jet-dilepton conversion is not prominent for all values of the invariant mass $M$, and the Drell-Yan process is found to dominate over the thermal dilepton emission and the jet-dilepton conversion for $M>$2.5 GeV at RHIC. The …
After the discovery of the Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), many experimental and theoretical efforts have been made to investigate physics issues involved in ultra relativistic heavy-ion collisions. The fundamental goal of this work is to present a short guide of the underlying theory of strong interactions with emphasis on the light vector mesons based on the exceptional work of R.Rapp and J.Wambach. Today widely believed that deconfinement and chiral symmetry restoration probably takes place in a hot and dense hadronic medium as this produced at these collisions. We focus at the place where th…
Kinetic equations are used to study thermalization of the anisotropic quark-gluon plasma produced by decays of color flux tubes possibly created at the very early stages of relativistic heavy-ion collisions. The decay rates of the initial color tubes are given by the Schwinger formula, while the collision terms are taken in the relaxation-time approximation. By connecting the relaxation time with viscosity we analyze production and thermalization processes in the plasma characterized by different values of the ratio of the shear viscosity to entropy density.
We calculate the order α_s finite temperature correction to dilepton production in quark-gluon plasma arising from the two-loop photon self-energy diagrams for high invariant mass M >> T.
We present a computation, within weakly-coupled thermal QCD, of the production rate of low invariant mass ($M^2 \sim g^2 T^2$) dileptons, at next-to-leading order (NLO) in the coupling (which is $O(g^3 e^2 T^2)$). This involves extending the NLO calculation of the photon rate which we recently presented to the case of small nonzero photon invariant mass. Numerical results are discussed and tabulated forms and code are provided for inclusion in hydrodynamical models. We find that NLO corrections can increase the dilepton rate by up to 30-40% relative to leading order. We find that the electroma…
A model of cut-off momentum distribution functions in a Quark Gluon Plasma with finite baryon chemical potential is discussed. This produces a quark gluon plasma signature in Ultra Relativistic Nuclear Collisions with a specific structure of the dilepton spectrum in the transverse momentum region of $(1-4)~GeV$ and the dilepton production rate is found to be a strong decreasing function of the chemical potential.
The Hanbury-Brown-Twiss (HBT) radii have been calculated from the two particle correlation functions with virtual photons produced in the collisions of two nuclei at ultra-relativistic energies. We show that the variation of the HBT radii with the invariant mass of the virtual photon can be used to characterize and distinguish the hadronic as well as the partonic phase that might have produced initially in the collisions. It has been illustrated that the non-monotonic variation of the HBT radii with invariant mass provides an access to the development of collective flow in the system.
We discuss the role of elastic and inelastic collisions and their interplay in the thermalization of the quark-gluon plasma. We consider a simplified situation of a static plasma, spatially uniform and isotropic in momentum space. We focus on the small momentum region, which equilibrates first, and on a short time scale. We obtain a simple kinetic equation that allows for an analytic description of the most important regimes. The present analysis suggests that the formation of a Bose condensate, expected when only elastic collisions are present, is strongly hindered by the inelastic, radiative…
In this paper, we propose an observable counting a weighted difference between right-handed and left-handed lepton pairs, which is coined dilepton helical rate. The weight is the momentum difference of the lepton pairs projected onto an auxiliary vector. We derive the helical rate in a quark-gluon plasma with a vorticity in the limit when the quark and lepton masses are ignored. We find the helical rate is maximized when the auxiliary vector is parallel to the vorticity, in which case it has a nearly spherical oblate ellipsoidal distribution. We propose that it can be used as a vortical-meter …
We investigate how thermalization of gluons depends on the initial conditions assumed in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions at RHIC. The study is based on simulations employing the pQCD inspired parton cascade solving the Boltzmann equation for gluons. We consider independently produced minijets with $p_T > p_0=1.3 \sim 2.0$ GeV and a color glass condensate as possible initial conditions for the freed gluons. It turns out that full kinetic equilibrium is achieved slightly sooner in denser system and its timescale tends to saturate. Compared with the kinetic equilibration we find a stronger…
Elastic gluon-gluon-quark (gluon-gluon-antiquark) scattering is studied in perturbative QCD with 123 Feynman diagrams at the tree level. Individually squared amplitudes and interference terms of the Feynman diagrams are derived. With the elastic gluon-gluon-quark scattering and the elastic gluon-gluon-antiquark scattering transport equations are established. In the thermalization process of initially created quark-gluon matter, this matter is governed by elastic 2-to-2 scattering and elastic 3-to-3 scattering. Solutions of the transport equations show that initially created quark-gluon matter …
This talk reviews the status of QCD calculations of photon and dilepton production rates in a Quark-Gluon plasma. Theses rates are known to order ${\cal O}(α_s)$. Their calculations involve various resummations to account for well identified physical effects that are briefly described. Lattice calculations of the spectral functions give also access to the dilepton rates. Comparison with perturbative results points to inconsistencies in both approaches when the dilepton energy becomes small.
In this paper, we study the thermalization of gluons and N_f flavors of massless quarks and antiquarks in a spatially homogeneous system. First, two coupled transport equations for gluons and quarks (and antiquarks) are derived within the diffusion approximation of the Boltzmann equation, with only 2<-> 2 processes included in the collision term. Then, these transport equations are solved numerically in order to study the thermalization of the quark-gluon plasma. At initial time, we assume that no quarks or antiquarks are present and we choose the gluon distribution in the form f = f_0 theta (…
We calculate the dilepton production rate from a thermalized quark-gluon plasma in heavy-ion collisions at RHIC energies. Higher-order QCD corrections are included by using an analytical correction factor $K^{(i)}$, which takes into account the $q\bar q$ initial-state interactions. We show that the analytic correction factor gives very good agreement with experimental Drell-Yan data and leads to large enhancement of the thermal dilepton emission rates. We compare the thermal dilepton yields with the expected production from open-charm decays and Drell-Yan background and assess the prospects of…
Dilepton production in In+In collisions at 158 AGeV is studied within the microscopic parton-hadron-string dynamics (PHSD) transport approach that incorporates explicit partonic degrees-of-freedom, dynamical hadronization as well as the more familiar hadronic dynamics in the final reaction stages. A comparison to the data of the NA60 Collaboration shows that the measured dilepton yield is well described by including the collisional broadening of vector mesons, while simultaneously accounting for the electromagnetic radiation of the strongly coupled quark-gluon plasma (sQGP) via off-shell quark…
We calculate leading-order dilepton yields from a quark-gluon plasma which has a time-dependent anisotropy in momentum space. Such anisotropies can arise during the earliest stages of quark-gluon plasma evolution due to the rapid longitudinal expansion of the created matter. Two phenomenological models for the proper time dependence of the parton hard momentum scale, p_hard, and the plasma anisotropy parameter, xi, are constructed which describe the transition of the plasma from its initial non-equilibrium state to an isotropic thermalized state. The first model constructed interpolates betwee…
Elastic parton-parton-parton scattering is briefly reviewed and is included in transport equations of quark-gluon matter. We solve the transport equations and get thermal states from initially produced quark-gluon matter. Both gluon matter and quark matter take early thermalization, but gloun matter has a shorter thermalization time than quark matter.
We consider the thermal production of dileptons and photons at temperatures above the critical temperature in QCD. We use a model where color excitations are suppressed by a small value of the Polyakov loop, the semi Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP). Comparing the semi-QGP to the perturbative QGP, we find a mild enhancement of thermal dileptons. In contrast, to leading logarithmic order in weak coupling there are far fewer hard photons from the semi-QGP than the usual QGP. To illustrate the possible effects on photon and dileptons production in heavy ion collisions, we integrate the rate with a realis…
Fluid dynamic considerations are used to determine the electric current spectral density in the regime of small energies and momenta. The spectral density in this regime is parameterized by the electric conductivity, the charge susceptibility, and the relaxation time for the electric current, which is needed for relativistic causality. Experimentally, the spectral function can be accessed through the production rates of photons and dileptons in the expanding quark-gluon plasma. We use fluid dynamic simulations of high energy nuclear collisions, together with the transport limit of the spectral…
We calculate the emission of large mass dileptons originating from the annihilation of quark jets passing through quark gluon plasma. Considering central collisions of heavy nuclei at SPS, RHIC and LHC energies, we find that the yield due to the jet-plasma interaction gets progressively larger as the collision energy increases. We find it to be negligible at SPS energies, of the order of the Drell-Yan contribution and much larger than the normal thermal yield at RHIC energies and up to a factor of ten larger than the Drell-Yan contribution at LHC energies. An observation of this new dilepton s…
The production of the intermediate mass dileptons originating from the annihilation and Compton scattering of the jets and high energy photons (resolved photons) passing through the quark-gluon plasma is calculated. The contribution of the dilepton yield due to the jet-plasma and high energy photon-plasma interaction is pronounced compared to the thermal and Drell-Yan dilepton spectrum at intermediate mass. The ordinary spectrum of thermal and Drell-Yan processes is enhanced by the jet and photon-plasma mechanism. The numerical results match to the PHENIX data accurately in the intermediate ma…
In these lectures, I will attempt a pedagogical and qualitative introduction to the theory of equilibrium and thermalization of quark-gluon plasmas. I assume only that the reader is familiar with quantum field theory at zero temperature and with QCD as the theory of the strong interactions. I focus on the limit of small alpha_s, which in principle should be relevant at extremely high temperature because of asymptotic freedom, and in any case provides a clean theoretical context in which to discuss a variety of phenomena. Topics discussed include the basic equilibrium formalism for finite-tempe…
We study thermalization of strongly coupled gauge theory plasma in the presence of magnetic field using the AdS/CFT correspondence. We utilize the falling energy-shell model as a holographic description of gauge theory plasma undergoing thermalization, and find the effect of magnetic field on thermalization time in various space-time dimensions. Our results demonstrate that magnetic field universally hastens thermalization of strongly coupled gauge theory plasma.
The chemical equilibration of a highly unsaturated quark-gluon plasma has been studied at finite baryon density. It is found that in the presence of small amount of baryon density, the chemical equilibration for gluon becomes slower and the temperature decreases less steeply as compared to the baryon free plasma. As a result, the space time integrated yield of dilepton is enhanced if the initial temperature of the plasma is held fixed. Even at a fixed initial energy density, the suppression of the dilepton yields at higher baryo-chemical potential is compensated, to a large extent, by the slow…
We calculate the rapidity dependence of leading-order medium dilepton yields resulting from a quark-gluon plasma which has a local time-dependent anisotropy in momentum space. We present a phenomenological model which includes temporal evolution of the plasma anisotropy parameter, xi, and the hard momentum scale, p_hard. Our model interpolates between 1+1 dimensional collisionally-broadened expansion at early times and 1+1 dimensional ideal hydrodynamic expansion at late times. Using our model, we find that at LHC energies, forward high-energy medium dilepton production would be suppressed by …
In this talk, I review the important role played by plasma instabilities in the thermalization of quark-gluon plasmas at very high energy. [Conference talk presented at Strong and Electroweak Mattter 2004, Helsinki, Finland, June 16--19.]
The early thermalization is crucial to the quark-gluon plasma as a perfect liquid and results from many-body scattering. We calculate squared amplitudes for elastic parton-parton-parton scattering in perturbative QCD. Transport equations with the squared amplitudes are established and solved to obtain the thermalization time of initially produced quark-gluon matter and the initial temperature of quark-gluon plasma. We find that the thermalization times of quark matter and gluon matter are different.
Hydrodynamical modeling of heavy ion collisions at RHIC suggests that the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) "thermalizes" in a remarkably short time scale, about 0.6 fm/c. We argue that this should be viewed as indicating fast isotropization, but not necessarily complete thermalization, of the non-equilibrium QGP. Non-Abelian plasma instabilities can drive local isotropization of an anisotropic QGP on a time scale which is faster than ordinary perturbative scattering processes. As a result, we argue that theoretical expectations based on weak coupling analysis are not necessarily in conflict with hydro…
Medium modifications of the electromagnetic spectral function in hadronic and quark-gluon matter are reviewed. A strong broadening of the $ρ$ meson, which dominates the spectral function in the low-mass regime, is quantitatively consistent with dilepton excess spectra measured in photoproduction off cold nuclei (CLAS/JLab) and in fixed-target ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions (NA45,NA60/CERN-SPS). The large excess observed by PHENIX at RHIC remains unexplained to date, but is most likely not due to emission from the Quark-Gluon Plasma. Connections to thermal lattice QCD promise progress i…
We re-examine soft dilepton emission from a weakly coupled Quark-Gluon Plasma. We show that Braaten, Pisarski, and Yuan's result that the dilepton rate rises as E^-4 (and the spectral weight scales as 1/E) at small energy E<<gT is correct, but that the coefficient they found for this behavior is not correct, because their analysis was incomplete. At still smaller scales, the behavior moderates to ~1/E^2 for E <= g^4 T, consistent with a finite electrical conductivity. We evaluate the spectral weight in the E~g^4 T region by kinetic theory techniques and show that it satisfies a sum rule, which…
The spectrum of dileptons produced by the quark-gluon plasma in an ultrarelativistic nucleus-nucleus collision depends only, to a good approximation, on the transverse mass M_t of the dilepton. This scaling is exact as long as transverse flow is negligible, and the system is in local thermal equilibrium. We implement a state-of-the-art modelization of kinetic and chemical equilibration in the early stages of the evolution to study the modifications of the spectrum. Violations of M_t scaling resulting from these effects are evaluated as a function of the shear viscosity to entropy ratio (eta/s)…
We investigate the effects of a charge asymmetry on the spectrum of dileptons radiating from a quark gluon plasma. We demonstrate the existence of a new set of processes in this regime. The dilepton production rate from the corresponding diagrams is shown to be as important as that obtained from the Born-term quark-antiquark annihilation.
Early local equilibration of a hot medium created in high-energy heavy ion collisions has been one of the long standing issues in hadron physics. The glasma model predicts that the medium initially has a large amount of high-momentum gluons but few quarks. We develop a phenomenological model based on collinear splitting and recombination of quarks and gluons for a simplified description of thermalization and chemical equilibration. We find that both could be achieved in a short time but chemical equilibration is slower than thermalization.
A measurement for studying the mass dependence of the dilepton interferometry in relativistic heavy-ion collision experiments as a tool to characterize the quark-gluon phase is proposed. In calculations involving dileptons, we show that the mass dependence of radii extracted from the virtual photon (dilepton) interferometry provide access to the development of collective flow with time. It is argued that the non-monotonic variation of HBT radii with invariant mass of the lepton pairs signals the formation of quark gluon plasma in heavy ion collisions. Our proposal of experimentally measuring t…
