Hydrodynamic behavior and the associated discussions of viscosity at RHIC has inspired a r enaissance in modeling viscous hydrodynamics. An explanation of Israel-Stewart hydrodynamics is presented here, with an emphasis on the tangible benefits compared to Navier Stokes.
We show from covariant transport theory that, for a massless ideal gas equation of state, even a small shear viscosity to entropy density ratio $η\approx s/(4 π)$ generates significant 15-30% dissipative corrections to elliptic flow for conditions expected in mid-peripheral (b = 8 fm) Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} \sim 200$ GeV at RHIC.
We study the effects of bulk viscosity on p_T spectra and elliptic flow in heavy ion collisions at RHIC. We argue that direct effect of the bulk viscosity on the evolution of the velocity field is small, but corrections to the freezeout distributions can be significant. These effects are dominated by chemical non-equilibration in the hadronic phase. We show that a non-zero bulk viscosity in the range $ζ/s \lsim 0.05$ improves the description of spectra and flow at RHIC.
A variety of physical phenomena can lead to viscous effects. In this talk we review several sources of shear and bulk viscosity with an emphasis on the bulk viscosity associated with chiral restoration. We show that in the limit of a second order phase transition, the viscosity peaks in a singularity at the critical point.
A variety of physical phenomena can lead to viscous effects. Several sources of shear and bulk viscosity are reviewed with an emphasis on the bulk viscosity associated with chiral restoration and with chemical non-equilibrium. We show that in a mean-field treatment of the limiting case of a second order phase transition, the bulk viscosity peaks in a singularity at the critical point.
Correlation studies exhibit a ridge-like feature in rapidity and azimuthal angle, with and without a jet trigger. We ask whether the feature in untriggered correlations can be a consequence of transverse flow and viscous diffusion.
We consider the longitudinal hydrodynamic evolution of the fireball created in a relativistic heavy-ion collision. Nonzero shear viscosity reduces the colling rate of the system and hinders the acceleration of the longitudinal flow. As a consequence, the initial energy density needed to reproduce the experimental data at RHIC energies is significantly reduced. At LHC energies, we expect that shear viscosity helps to conserve a Bjorken plateau in the rapidity distributions during the expansion.
We describe ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions at RHIC and the LHC with a hybrid model using the IP-Glasma model for the earliest stage and viscous hydrodynamics and microscopic transport for the later stages of the collision. We demonstrate that within this framework the bulk viscosity of the plasma plays an important role in describing the experimentally observed radial flow and azimuthal anisotropy simultaneously. We further investigate the dependence of observables on the temperature below which we employ the microscopic transport description.
We report recent progress on causal viscous hydrodynamics for relativistic heavy ion collisions. For fixed specific shear viscosity eta/s, uncertainties in the elliptic flow arising from initial conditions, equation of state, bulk viscosity and numerical viscosity, and the treatment of the highly viscous hadronic stage and freeze-out procedure are analysed. A comparison of current viscous hydrodynamic results with experimental data yields a robust upper limit eta/s < 5/(4pi).
In this article, we briefly review the recent progress related to extracting the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) specific shear viscosity from the flow data measured at Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
The interplay between shear and bulk viscosities on the flow harmonics, $v_n$'s, at RHIC is investigated using the newly developed relativistic 2+1 hydrodynamical code v-USPhydro that includes bulk and shear viscosity effects both in the hydrodynamic evolution and also at freeze-out. While shear viscosity is known to attenuate the flow harmonics, we find that the inclusion of bulk viscosity decreases the shear viscosity-induced suppression of the flow harmonics bringing them closer to their values in ideal hydrodynamical calculations. Depending on the value of the bulk viscosity to entropy den…
Relativistic viscous hydrodynamic fits to RHIC data on the centrality dependence of multiplicity, transverse and elliptic flow for sqrt{s}=200 GeV Au+Au collisions are presented. For Glauber-type initial conditions, while data on integrated v_2 is consistent with a ratio of viscosity over entropy density up to eta/s=0.16, data on minimum bias v_2 seems to favor a much smaller viscosity over entropy ratio, below the bound from the AdS/CFT conjecture. Some caveats on this result are discussed.
Within a covariant parton cascade, we discuss the impact of both finite shear viscosity $η$ and freeze-out dynamics on the elliptic flow generated at RHIC. We find that the enhancement of $η/s$ in the cross-over region of the QGP phase transition cannot be neglected in order to extract the information from the QGP phase. We also point out that the elliptic flow $v_2(p_T)$ for a fluid at $η/s \sim 0.1-0.2$ is consistent with the one needed by quark number scaling drawing a nice consistency between the nearly perfect fluid property of QGP and the coalescence process.
We study real photons produced in heavy ion collisions at RHIC, and we calculate their spectrum and its azimuthal momentum anisotropy. The photons from a variety of sources are included, and the interplay and the time-evolution of those sources are modelled in a full 3D hydrodynamic simulation. We quantify the v_2 of thermal photons produced in ideal and viscous fluids, and the consequences of using different initial conditions are explored.
In this proceeding, we briefly describe the viscous hydrodynamics + hadron cascade hybrid model VISHNU for relativistic heavy ion collisions and report the current status on extracting the QGP viscosity from elliptic flow data.
In an earlier work (arXiv:0808.0953) we established that causal Israel-Stewart viscous hydrodynamics is only accurate in RHIC applications at very low shear viscosities 4 pi eta_s / s < ~ 1.5-2. We show here that the region of applicability is significantly reduced if bulk viscosity plays a role in the dynamics.
The specific shear viscosity (eta/s)_QGP of quark-gluon plasma (QGP) can be extracted from elliptic flow data in heavy-ion collisions by comparing them with the dynamical model VISHNU which couples a viscous fluid dynamic description of the QGP with a microscopic kinetic description of the late hadronic rescattering and freeze-out stage. A robust method for fixing (eta/s)_QGP from the collision centrality dependence of the eccentricity-scaled charged hadron elliptic flow is presented. The systematic uncertainties associated with this extraction method are discussed, with specific attention to …
Experiments at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) suggest that the state of matter produced in the experiments has a low shear-viscosity to entropy-density ratio. We ask here the question what is this ratio in usual finite nuclei at low temperature. We use the experimental and theoretical results for the widths of giant vibrational states in nuclei in order to calculate the above ratio. We find that the values of this ratio are not very different from the ones found in the RHIC experiments.
Elliptic flow measurements at RHIC suggest that quark gluon plasma flows with very little viscosity compared to weak coupling expectations, challenging theorists to explain why this fluid is so nearly ``perfect''. It is therefore vital to find quantitative experimental information on the viscosity of the plasma. We propose that measurements of transverse momentum fluctuations can be used to determine the shear viscosity. We use current data to estimate the viscosity-to-entropy ratio in the range from 0.08 to 0.3, and discuss how future measurements can reduce this uncertainty.
In the Israel-Stewart's theory of dissipative hydrodynamics, we have analysed the STAR data on $ϕ$ meson production in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s}$=200 GeV. From a simultaneous fit to $ϕ$ mesons multiplicity, mean $p_T$ and integrated $v_2$, we obtain a phenomenological estimate of QGP viscosity, $η/s =0.07 \pm 0.03 \pm 0.14$, the first error is due to the experimental uncertainty in STAR measurements, the second reflects the uncertainties in initial and final conditions of the fluid.
Using ideal and viscous hydrodynamics, the ratio of azimuthal moments v4/(v2)^2 is calculated for pions, protons, and kaons in sqrt{s}=200 A*GeV Au+Au collisions. For any value of viscosity here is little dependence on particle species. Ideal hydrodynamics and data show a flat curve as a function of pt. Adding viscosity in the standard way destroys this flatness. However, it can be restored by replacing the standard quadratic ansatz for delta f (the viscous correction to the distribution function at freeze-out) with a weaker momentum dependence.
The hydrodynamic model for the expansion of the fireball in relativistic heavy-ion collisions is presented. Calculations using relativistic hydrodynamics of a fluid with small viscosity yield a satisfactory description of the experimental data on the particle spectra, the elliptic flow or the interferometry radii.
In this article, we briefly review recent progress on hydrodynamic modeling and its implementations to relativistic heavy-ion collisions at RHIC and the LHC. The related topics include: 1) initial state fluctuations, final state correlations and event-by-event hydrodynamics, 2) extracting the QGP shear viscosity from flow data, 3) flow and hydrodynamics in 5.02 A TeV p+Pb collisions.
This work reports on investigations of the effects on the evolution of viscous hydrodynamics and on the flow coefficients of thermal dileptons, originating from a temperature-dependent specific shear viscosity $η/s (T)$ at temperatures beyond 180 MeV formed at the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC). We show that the elliptic flow of thermal dileptons can resolve the magnitude of $η/s$ at the high temperatures, where partonic degrees of freedom become relevant, whereas discriminating between different specific functional forms will likely not be possible at RHIC using this observable.
We compute the initial energy densities produced in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions from NLO perturbative QCD using a saturation conjecture to control soft particle production, and describe the subsequent space-time evolution of the system with hydrodynamics, event by event. The resulting centrality dependence of the low-$p_T$ observables from this pQCD + saturation + hydro ("EKRT") framework are then compared simultaneously to the LHC and RHIC measurements. With such an analysis we can test the initial state calculation, and constrain the temperature dependence of the shear viscosity-t…
Recent hexadecapole (v4) and elliptic (v2) flow measurements are used to constrain estimates for the degree of local equilibrium, mean free path $λ$, and the viscosity to entropy density ratio (eta/s) of the plasma produced in Au+Au collisions at RootS = 200 GeV. The eccentricity-scaled flow coefficients v2/e2 and v4/e4 indicate that the plasma achieves a degree of local equilibrium within 5 - 10% of the value expected for a fluid with eta/s equal to the conjectured lower bound of 1/4pi. Estimates for $λ$ and eta/s as a function of collision centrality and particle transverse momentum pT, poin…
Ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions at the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) are thought to have produced a state of matter called the Quark-Gluon-Plasma, characterized by a very small shear viscosity to entropy density ratio $η/s$, near the lower bound predicted for that quantity by Anti-deSitter space/Conformal Field Theory (AdS/CFT) methods. As the produced matter expands and cools, it evolves through a phase described by a hadron gas with rapidly increasing $η/s$. We calculate $η/s$ as a function of temperature in this phase and find that its value poses a challenge for viscous rel…
The particle spectra and Hanbury-Brown Twiss (HBT) radius of Au+Au collisions at RHIC energy are investigated by a hydrodynamical expanding source with both shear and bulk viscosities ($ζ$). With a large width of the ratio of $ζ$ to entropy density $s$, both the particle transverse momentum spectra and the ratio $R_{out}/R_{side}$ of HBT radii in the direction of the total transverse momentum of detected two particles ($R_{out}$) and perpendicular to both this direction and the beam direction ($R_{side}$) become a little steeper.
We investigate the effects of a temperature-dependent shear viscosity over entropy density ratio eta/s on the flow anisotropy coefficients v_2 and v_4 in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions at RHIC and LHC. We find that v_4 is more sensitive to the viscosity at low temperatures than v_2. At RHIC v_2 is mostly affected by the viscosity around the phase transition, but the larger the collision energy, the more the quark-gluon plasma viscosity affects v_2.
We show that the centrality and system-size dependence of elliptic flow measured at RHIC are fully described by a simple model based on eccentricity scaling and incomplete thermalization. We argue that the elliptic flow is at least 25% below the (ideal) ``hydrodynamic limit'', even for the most central Au-Au collisions. This lack of perfect equilibration allows for estimates of the effective parton cross section in the Quark-Gluon Plasma and of its viscosity to entropy density ratio. We also show how the initial conditions affect the transport coefficients and thermodynamic quantities extracte…
We compare 2->2 covariant transport theory and causal Israel-Stewart hydrodynamics in 2+1D longitudinally boost invariant geometry with RHIC-like initial conditions and a conformal e = 3p equation of state. The pressure evolution in the center of the collision zone and the final differential elliptic flow v2(pT) from the two theories agree remarkably well for a small shear viscosity to entropy density ratio eta/s ~ 1/(4 pi), and also for a large cross section sigma ~ 50 mb. A key to this agreement is keeping ALL terms in the Israel-Stewart equations of motion. Our results indicate promising pr…
Starting from IP-Glasma initial conditions, we investigate the effects of bulk pressure on thermal dilepton production at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) energies. Though results of the thermal dilepton $v_2$ under the influence of both bulk and shear viscosity is presented for top RHIC energy, more emphasis is put on LHC energy where such a calculation is computed for the first time. The effects of the bulk pressure on thermal dilepton $v_2$ at the LHC are explored through bulk-induced modifications on the dilepton yield.
We compute v4/(v2)^2 in ideal and viscous hydrodynamics. We investigate its sensitivity to details of the hydrodynamic model and compare the results to experimental data from RHIC. Whereas v2 has a significant sensitivity only to initial eccentricity and viscosity while being insensitive to freeze out temperature, we find that v4/(v2)^2 is quite insensitive to initial eccentricity. On the other hand, it can still be sensitive to shear viscosity in addition to freeze out temperature, although viscous effects do not universally increase v4/(v2)^2 as originally predicted. Consistent with data, we…
We present a 3-D hydro + cascade model in which viscosity and a realistic freezeout process for the hadronic phase are taken into account. We compare our results to experimental data and discuss the finite state interaction effects on physical observables.
We present event-by-event viscous hydrodynamic calculations of the anisotropic flow coefficients v_2 to v_5 for heavy-ion collisions at the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC). We study the dependence of different flow harmonics on shear viscosity and the morphology of the initial state. v_3 and higher flow harmonics exhibit a particularly strong dependence on both the initial granularity and shear viscosity. We argue that a combined analysis of all available flow harmonics will allow to determine eta/s of the quark gluon plasma precisely. Presented results strongly hint at a value (eta/s)_…
In this work, we have extracted the initial tempearture from the transverse momentum spectra of charged particles in $Au+Au$ collisions using STAR data at RHIC energies from $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 7.7 to 200 GeV. The initial energy density ($\varepsilon$), shear viscosity to entropy density ratio ($η/s$), trace anomaly ($Δ$), the squared speed of sound ($C_s^2$), entropy density, and bulk viscosity to entropy density ratio ($ζ/s$) are obtained and compared with the lattice QCD calculations for (2+1) flavor. The initial temperatures obtained are compared with various hadronization and chemical freez…
It is by now well known that the relativistic heavy-ion collisions at RHIC, BNL have produced a strongly interacting fluid with remarkable properties, among them the lowest ever observed ratio of the coefficient of shear viscosity to entropy density. Arguments based on ideas from the String Theory, in particular the AdS/CFT correspondence, led to the conjecture --- now known to be violated --- that there is an absolute lower limit $1/4 π$ on the value of this ratio. Causal viscous hydrodynamics calculations together with the RHIC data have put an upper limit on this ratio, a small multiple of …
Substantial collective flow is observed in collisions between large nuclei at RHIC (Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider) as evidenced by single-particle transverse momentum distributions and by azimuthal correlations among the produced particles. The data are well-reproduced by perfect fluid dynamics. A calculation of the dimensionless ratio of shear viscosity $η$ to entropy density $s$ by Kovtun, Son and Starinets within anti-de Sitter space/conformal field theory yields $η/s = \hbar/4πk_B$ which has been conjectured to be a lower bound for any physical system. Motivated by these results, we show…
Recently, transport coefficients viz. shear viscosity, electrical conductivity etc. of strongly interacting matter produced in heavy-ion collisions have drawn considerable interest. We study the normalised electrical conductivity ($σ_{\rm el}$/T) of hot QCD matter as a function of temperature (T) using the Color String Percolation Model (CSPM). We also study the temperature dependence of shear viscosity and its ratio with electrical conductivity for the QCD matter. We compare CSPM estimations with various existing results and lattice Quantum Chromodynamics (lQCD) predictions with (2+1) dynamic…
We argue that an expanding quark-gluon plasma has an anomalous viscosity, which arises from interactions with dynamically generated colour fields. The anomalous viscosity dominates over the collisional viscosity for large velocity gradients or weak coupling. This effect may provide an explanation for the apparent near perfect liquidity of the matter produced in nuclear collisions at RHIC without the assumption that it is a strongly coupled state.
The relativistic hydrodynamic model is applied to describe the expansion of the dense matter formed in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. The hydrodynamic expansion of the fluid, supplemented with the statistical emission of hadrons at freeze-out gives a satisfactory description of the observables for particles emitted with soft momenta. Experimental data for the transverse momentum spectra, elliptic flow and interferometry radii give constraints on the properties of the fluid, its equation of state and viscosity coefficients. The role of the fluctuations of the initial profile of the energy d…
The QCD matter produced in nuclear collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) has been found to have a very low shear viscosity, which is close to the lower bound allowed by unitarity. The matter has also been found to strongly suppress the emission of energetic hadrons. This phenomenon, called "jet quenching" is interpreted to be the result of a large energy loss by the precursor parton on its path through the dense matter, primarily due to gluon radiation. I discuss how the two phenomena are related. The RHIC data suggest, in some scenarios of jet quenching, that the quark-gluo…
The bulk viscosity, $ζ$ and its ratio with the shear viscosity, $ζ/η$ have been studied in an anisotropically expanding pure glue plasma in the presence of turbulent color fields. It has been shown that the anisotropy in the momentum distribution function of gluons, which has been determined from a linearized transport equation eventually leads to the bulk viscosity. For the isotropic (equilibrium) state, a recently proposed quasi-particle model of pure SU(3) lattice QCD equation of state has been employed where the interactions are encoded in the effective fugacity. It has been argued that th…
A state-of-the-art 3+1 dimensional cascade + viscous hydro + cascade model vHLLE+UrQMD has been applied to heavy ion collisions in RHIC Beam Energy Scan range $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}=7.7\dots 200$ GeV. Based on comparison to available experimental data it was estimated that an effective value of shear viscosity over entropy density ratio $η/s$ in hydrodynamic stage has to decrease from $η/s=0.2$ to $0.08$ as collision energy increases from $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}} = 7.7$ to $39$ GeV, and to stay at $η/s=0.08$ for $39\le\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}\le200$ GeV. In this work we show how an equation of state with first…
The viscosity of the QGP is a presently hotly debated subject. Since its computation from first principles is difficult, it is desirable to try to extract it from experimental data. Viscous hydrodynamics provides a tool that can attack this problem and which may work in regions where ideal hydrodynamics begins to fail. This thesis focuses on viscous hydrodynamics for relativistic heavy ion collisions. We first review the 2nd order viscous equations obtained from different approaches, and then report on the work of the Ohio State University group on setting up the equations for causal viscous h…
A new set of equations for relativistic viscous hydrodynamics that captures both weak-coupling and strong-coupling physics to second order in gradients has been developed recently. We apply this framework to bulk physics at RHIC, both for standard (Glauber-type) as well as for Color-Glass-Condensate initial conditions and show that the results do not depend strongly on the values for the second-order transport coefficients. Results for multiplicity, radial flow and elliptic flow are presented and we quote the ratio of viscosity over entropy density for which our hydrodynamic model is consisten…
Following the experimental program at BNL RHIC, we perform a similar "energy scan" using 3+1D viscous hydrodynamics coupled to the UrQMD hadron cascade, and study the collision energy dependence of pion and kaon rapidity distributions and $m_T$-spectra, as well as charged hadron elliptic flow. To this aim the equation of state for finite baryon density from a Chiral model coupled to the Polyakov loop is employed for hydrodynamic stage. 3D initial conditions from UrQMD are used to study gradual deviation from boost-invariant scaling flow. We find that the inclusion of shear viscosity in the hyd…
Using a (2+1)-d viscous hydrodynamical model, we study the dependence of flow observables on the collision energy ranging from sqrt(s)=7.7 A GeV at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) to sqrt(s)=2760 A GeV at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). With a realistic equation of state, Glauber model initial conditions and a small specific shear viscosity eta/s = 0.08, the differential charged hadron elliptic flow v_2^{ch}(p_T,sqrt(s)) is found to exhibit a very broad maximum as a function of sqrt(s) around top RHIC energy, rendering it almost independent of collision energy for 39 < sqrt(s) < 27…
We explore the effects of shear viscosity on the hydrodynamic evolution and final hadron spectra of Cu+Cu collisions at ultrarelativistic collision energies, using the newly developed (2+1)-dimensional viscous hydrodynamic code VISH2+1. Based on the causal Israel-Stewart formalism, this code describes the transverse evolution of longitudinally boost-invariant systems without azimuthal symmetry around the beam direction. Shear viscosity is shown to decelerate the longitudinal and accelerate the transverse hydrodynamic expansion. For fixed initial conditions, this leads to a longer quark-gluon p…
We present a combined analysis of elliptic and triangular flow data from LHC and RHIC using viscous relativistic hydrodynamics. Elliptic flow $v_2$ in hydrodynamics is proportional to the participant eccentricity $\varepsilon_2$ and triangular flow is proportional to the participant triangularity $\varepsilon_3$, which means $v_n=C_n\varepsilon_n$, where $C_n$ is the linear response coefficient in harmonic n. Experimental data for $v_2$ and $v_3$ combined with hydrodynamic calculations of $C_n$ thus provide us with the rms values of initial anisotropies $\varepsilon_2$ and $\varepsilon_3$. By …
Femtoscopic measurements at RHIC have been hailed as a source of insight into the bulk properties of QCD matter. However, hydrodynamic models, which have been successful in reproducing other observables have failed to satisfactorily explain femtoscopic two-particle correlation measurements. This failure has been labeled the "HBT puzzle". In this talk, I present correlations using a hybrid model composed of a viscous hydrodynamic module and a hadronic cascade. After incorporating early acceleration, viscosity and a stiffer equation of state, the extracted source sizes come much closer to experi…
We review the results from the event-by-event next-to-leading order perturbative QCD + saturation + viscous hydrodynamics (EbyE NLO EKRT) model. With a simultaneous analysis of LHC and RHIC bulk observables we systematically constrain the QCD matter shear viscosity-to-entropy ratio eta/s(T), and test the initial state computation. In particular, we study the centrality dependences of hadronic multiplicities, pT spectra, flow coefficients, relative elliptic flow fluctuations, and various flow-correlations in 2.76 and 5.02 TeV Pb+Pb collisions at the LHC and 200 GeV Au+Au collisions at RHIC. Ove…
We introduce an event-by-event pQCD + saturation + hydro ("EKRT") framework for high-energy heavy-ion collisions, where we compute the produced fluctuating QCD-matter energy densities from next-to-leading order (NLO) perturbative QCD (pQCD) using saturation to control soft particle production, and describe the space-time evolution of the QCD matter with viscous hydrodynamics, event by event (EbyE). We compare the computed centrality dependence of hadronic multiplicities, p_T spectra and flow coefficients v_n against LHC and RHIC data. We compare also the computed EbyE probability distributions…
I review recent developments in the field of relativistic hydrodynamics and its application to the bulk dynamics in heavy-ion collisions at the Relativistic Heavy- Ion Collider (RHIC) and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In particular, I report on progress in going beyond second order relativistic viscous hydrodynamics for conformal fluids, including temperature dependent shear viscosity to entropy density ratios, as well as coupling hydrodynamic calculations to microscopic hadronic rescattering models. I describe event-by-event hydrodynamic simulations and their ability to compute higher harm…
Hybrid approaches based on relativistic hydrodynamics and transport theory have been successfully applied for many years for the dynamical description of heavy ion collisions at ultrarelativistic energies. In this work a new viscous hybrid model employing the hadron transport approach UrQMD for the early and late non-equilibrium stages of the reaction, and 3+1 dimensional viscous hydrodynamics for the hot and dense quark-gluon plasma stage is introduced. This approach includes the equation of motion for finite baryon number, and employs an equation of state with finite net-baryon density to al…
We apply a 3+1D viscous hydrodynamic + cascade model to the heavy ion collision reactions with $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=6.3\dots39$ GeV. To accommodate the model for a given collision energy range, the initial conditions for hydrodynamic phase are taken from UrQMD, and the equation of state at finite baryon density is based on Chiral model coupled to the Polyakov loop. We study the collision energy dependence of pion and kaon rapidity distributions and $m_T$-spectra, as well as charged hadron elliptic flow and how shear viscosity affects them. The model calculations are compared to the data for Pb-Pb co…
The agreement of hydrodynamic predictions of differential elliptic flow and radial flow patterns with Au+Au data is one of the main lines of evidence suggesting the nearly perfect fluid properties of the strongly coupled Quark Gluon Plasma, sQGP, produced at RHIC. We study the sensitivity of this conclusion to different hydrodynamic assumptions on chemical and thermal freezeout after the sQGP hadronizes. We show that if chemical freezeout occurs at the hadronization time, the differential elliptic flow for pions increase with proper time in the late hadronic phase until thermal freezeout and l…