In this work we study the non-equilibrium dynamics of a quark-gluon plasma, as created in heavy-ion collisions. We investigate how big of a role plasma instabilities can play in the isotropization and equilibration of a quark-gluon plasma. In particular, we determine, among other things, how much collisions between the particles can reduce the growth rate of unstable modes. This is done both in a model calculation using the hard-loop approximation, as well as in a real-time lattice simulation combining both classical Yang-Mills-fields as well as inter-particle collisions. The new extended version of the simulation is also used to investigate jet transport in isotropic media, leading to a cutoff-independent result for the transport coefficient q-hat. The precise determination of such transport coefficients is essential, since they can provide important information about the medium created in heavy-ion collisions. In anisotropic media, the effect of instabilities on jet transport is studied, leading to a possible explanation for the experimental observation that high-energy jets traversing the plasma perpendicular to the beam axis experience much stronger broadening in rapidity than in azimuth. The investigation of collective modes in the hard-loop limit is extended to fermionic modes, which are shown to be all stable. Finally, we study the possibility of using high energy photon production as a tool to experimentally determine the anisotropy of the created system. Knowledge of the degree of local momentum-space anisotropy reached in a heavy-ion collision is essential for the study of instabilities and their role for isotropization and thermalization, because their growth rate depends strongly on the anisotropy
In this talk I discuss collective excitations that carry fermion quantum numbers. Such excitations occur in the quark-gluon plasma and can also be produced in cold atom systems under special conditions.
We discuss the characteristics of collective modes induced by relativistic jets in an anisotropic quark-gluon plasma(AQGP). Assuming a tsunami-like initial jet distribution, it is found that the dispersion relations for both the stable and unstable modes are modified substantially due to the passage of jet compared to the case when there is no jet. It has also been shown that the growth rate of instability first increases compared to the no jet case and then completely turned into damping except the case when the jet velocity is perpendicular to the wave vector in which case the instability al…
We study the collective modes of gluons in an anisotropic thermal medium in the presence of a constant background magnetic field using the hard-thermal loop (HTL) perturbation theory. The momentum space anisotropy of the medium has been incorporated through the generalized $`$Romatschke-Strickland' form of the distribution function, whereas, the magnetic modification arising from the quark loop contribution has been taken into account in the lowest Landau level approximation. We consider two special cases: (i) a spheroidal anisotropy with the anisotropy vector orthogonal to the external magnet…
We study the effect of unlinearized medium on the collective excitations in quark-gluon plasma. We present two kinds of non-Abelian oscillation solutions which respectively correspond to weakly and strongly nonlinear coupling of field components in color space. We also show that the weakly nonlinear solution is similar to Abelian-like one but has the frequency shift, which is of order $g^2T$, from eigenfrequency.
We determine the fermionic collective modes of a quark-gluon plasma which is anisotropic in momentum space. We calculate the fermion self-energy in both the imaginary- and real-time formalisms and find that numerically and analytically (for two special cases) there are no unstable fermionic modes. In addition we demonstrate that in the hard-loop limit the Kubo-Martin-Schwinger condition, which relates the off-diagonal components of the real-time fermion self-energy, holds even for the anisotropic, and therefore non-equilibrium, quark-gluon plasma considered here. The results obtained here set …
We propose a unified space-time picture of baryon stopping and quark-gluon plasma creation in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions. It is assumed that the highly Lorentz contracted nuclei are decelerated by the coherent color field which is formed between them after they pass through each other. This process continues until the field is neutralized by the Schwinger mechanism. Conservation of energy and momentum allow us to calculate the energy losses of the nuclear slabs and the initial energy density of the quark-gluon plasma.
We analyze the collective modes of high-temperature QCD in the case when there is an anisotropy in the momentum-space distribution function for the gluons. We perform a tensor decomposition of the gluon self-energy and solve the dispersion relations for both stable and unstable modes. Results are presented for a class of anisotropic distribution functions which can be obtained by stretching or squeezing an isotropic distribution function along one direction in momentum space. We find that there are three stable modes and either one or two unstable modes depending on whether the distribution fu…
Heavy-ion collision experiments at RHIC and the LHC have found a new emergent phase of QCD, a strongly coupled quark-gluon plasma (sQGP) that is distinctively different from either the low temperature hadron phase or the very high temperature weakly coupled plasma phase. Highly nontrivial emergent phenomena occur in such sQGP and two examples will be discussed in this contribution: the magnetic component of sQGP that stems from topologically nontrivial configurations in the gluon sector; and the anomalous chiral transport that arises as macroscopic manifestation of microscopic chiral anomaly i…
We continue our exploration of the collective modes of an anisotropic quark gluon plasma by extending our previous analysis to arbitrary Riemann sheets. We demonstrate that in the presence of momentum-space anisotropies in the parton distribution functions there are new relevant singularities on the neighboring unphysical sheets. We then show that for sufficiently strong anisotropies that these singularities move into the region of spacelike momentum and their effect can extend down to the physical sheet. In order to demonstrate this explicitly we consider the polarization tensor for gluons pr…
We discuss the collective modes due to the propagation of two oppositely moving relativistic jets (dijet) in an anisotropic quark-gluon plasma(AQGP) and compare the results with the case of single jet propagation. For the sake of simplicity, assuming a tsunami-like initial jet distribution, we observe that the dispersion relations for both the stable and unstable modes are altered significantly due to the passage of dijet in comparison with the case of single jet propagation. It has been further demonstrated that the growth rate of instability, due to introduction of dijet in the system, incre…
We present a unified description of the high temperature phase of QCD, the so-called quark-gluon plasma, in a regime where the effective gauge coupling $g$ is sufficiently small to allow for weak coupling calculations. The main focuss is the construction of the effective theory for the collective excitations which develop at a typical scale $gT$, which is well separated from the typical energy of single particle excitations which is the temperature $T$. We show that the plasma particles provide a source for long wavelength oscillations of average fields which carry the quantum numbers of the p…
Recent developments in the field of anisotropic flow in nuclear collision are reviewed. The results from the top AGS energy to the top RHIC energy are discussed with emphasis on techniques, interpretation, and uncertainties in the measurements.
The lecture is a brief review of the following topics: (i) collective flow phenomena in heavy ion collisions. The data from RHIC indicate robust collective flows, well described by hydrodynamics with expected Equation of State. The transport properties turned out to be unexpected, with very small viscosity; (ii) physics of highly excited matter produced in heavy ion collisions at T_c<T<4T_c is different from weakly coupled quark-gluon plasma because of relatively strong coupling generating bound states of quasiparticles; (iii) wider discussion of other ``strongly coupled systems'' including st…
The properties of QCD vacuum and the confinement of quarks and gluons certainly influence the multiparticle production processes. Some phenomenological attempts of the consideration of related collective effects and the possibilities of their experimental detection are briefly discussed in this review. We consider in particular the correlation characteristics of pion systems, statistical and hydrodynamical analogies, the problem of phase transition from a quark-gluon plasma to a multipion state and the possible modifications of the evolution of the quark-gluon jets. The presentation is somewha…
Parton distributions in the small $x$ region are numerically predicted by using a modified DGLAP equation with the GRV-like input distributions. We find that gluon recombination at twist-4 level obviously suppresses the rapid growth of parton densities with $x$ decrease. We show that before the saturation scale $Q^2_s$ is reached, saturation and partial saturation appear in the small $x$ behavior of parton distributions in nucleus and free proton, respectively. The antishadowing contributions to the saturation phenomena are also discussed.
The dissipative corrections to the hydrodynamic equations describing the evolution of energy-momentum tensor and parton densities are derived in a simple way using the scaling approximation for the expanding quark gluon plasma at finite baryon density. This procedure has been extended to study the process of chemical equilibration using a set of rate equations appropriate for a viscous quark gluon plasma. It is found that in the presence of dissipation, the temperature of the plasma evolves slower, whereas the quark and gluon fugacities evolve faster than their counterparts in the ideal case w…
We study the rotational collective motion of the quark-gluon plasma in relativistic heavy ion collisions using the widely-adopted AMPT (A Multi-Phase Transport) model. The global angular momentum, the average vorticity carried by the quark-gluon plasma, and the locally defined vorticity fields are computed for Au+Au collisions, with detailed information of their time evolution, spatial distribution, as well as the dependence on beam energy and collision centrality.
Collective properties of the quark-gluon medium induced by its polarization are described by macroscopic QCD equations. The parton currents traversing it lead to emission of Cherenkov gluons, the wake effect and the transition radiation. Comparison with experimental data of RHIC reveals large value of the chromopermittivity of the medium while cosmic ray data at higher energies (close to LHC) favor much smaller values. The dispersion equations show that the proper modes of the medium are unstable.
The observation of long-range collective correlations for particles emitted in high-multiplicity pp and pPb collisions has opened up new opportunities of investigating novel high-density QCD phenomena in small colliding systems. We review experimental results related to the studies of collective phenomena in small systems from RHIC and the LHC over the past several years. Latest development in theoretical interpretations motivated by different frameworks are also reviewed, and confronted with the experimental data. Perspectives on possible future directions are discussed, with the aim of furth…
The discovery of QGP phenomena in small collision systems like pp and p-Pb collisions have challenged the basic paradigms of heavy-ion and high-energy physics. These proceedings give a brief overview of the key findings and their implications, as well as today's experimental and theoretical situation. An outlook of future measurement is made.
We present a study of the properties of the collective modes of a system composed by a thermalized quark-gluon plasma traversed by a relativistic jet of partons. We find that when the jet traverses the system unstable gauge field modes are excited and grow on very short time scales. The aim is to provide a novel mechanism for the description of the jet quenching phenomenon, where the jet crossing the plasma loses energy exciting colored unstable modes. In order to simplify the analysis we employ a linear response approximation, valid for short time scales. We assume that the partons in the jet…
The properties of the quark-gluon medium observed in high energy nucleus-nucleus collisions are discussed. The main experimental facts about these collisions are briefly described and compared with data about proton-proton collisions. Both microscopic and macroscopic approaches to their description are reviewed. The chromodynamics of the quark-gluon medium at high energies is mainly considered. The energy loss of partons moving in this medium is treated. The principal conclusion is that the medium possesses some collective properties which are crucial for understanding the experimental observa…
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.
We discuss the properties of the collective modes of a system composed by a thermalized quark-gluon plasma traversed by a relativistic jet of partons. The transport equations obeyed by the components of the plasma and of the jet are studied in the Vlasov approximation. Assuming that the partons in the jet can be described with a tsunami-like distribution function we derive the expressions of the dispersion law of the collective modes. Then the behavior of the unstable gauge modes of the system is analyzed for various values of the velocity of the jet, of the momentum of the collective modes an…
The effects of high-temperature, dense systems, and strong magnetic fields on Quantum Chromodynamics related phenomena are studied in different perspectives: in the high-temperature and densities, the QCD-phase diagram from the Linear Sigma Model point of view is computed. In particular, the CEP location and transition lines for chiral restoration were found. In the intense magnetic fields and high-gluon density, the gluon fusion and gluon splitting channels are proposed as new photon production sources to better explain the experimental data in the so-called "photon puzzle". Finally, the ther…
Quenching of gluonic jets and heavy quark production in Au+Au collisions at RHIC can be understood within the pQCD based 3+1 dimensional parton transport model BAMPS including pQCD bremsstrahlung $2 \leftrightarrow 3$ processes. Furthermore, the development of conical structures induced by gluonic jets is investigated in a static box for the regimes of small and large dissipation.
We study collective modes in anisotropic plasmas of quarks and gluons using a quasi-particle picture and a hard loop approximation. We use a general class of anisotropic distribution functions, and we consider chirally asymmetric systems. We introduce a complete tensor basis to decompose the gluon polarization tensor into a set of nine scalar functions. We derive and solve the corresponding dispersion equations. Imaginary modes are particularly important because of their potential influence on plasma dynamics. We explore in detail their dependence on the chiral chemical potential and the param…
The quark-gluon medium described by QCD equations is considered at high energies. Within the assumptions of the linear response theory the chromopermittivity of the medium is introduced and it is argued that it exceeds 1 at TeV energies. The dispersion equations show that the proper modes of the medium reveal instability and the parton currents traversing it induce the emission of Cherenkov gluons. Their distributions at LHC can differ from those typical for lower energies of RHIC because they are determined by the high energy dependence of the chromopermittivity while the latter ones arise du…
We discuss the properties of the collective modes of a system composed by a thermalized quark-gluon plasma traversed by a relativistic jet of partons. The transport equations obeyed by the components of the plasma and of the jet are studied in the Vlasov approximation. Assuming that the partons in the jet can be described with a tsunami-like distribution function we derive the expressions of the dispersion law of the collective modes. Then the behavior of the unstable gauge modes of the system is analyzed for various values of the velocity of the jet, of the momentum of the collective modes an…
We confront soft Pomeron and gluon saturation models with the first LHC data on inclusive hadron production. We claim that while the first type of models are not able to describe some part of the LHC data, the Colour-Glass-Condensate (gluon saturation) approach gives an adequate description of the data. Here, we compare our published predictions with the recently available 7 TeV data. We firmly believe that if further experimental measurements confirm that the gluon saturation works, it will be a major discovery.
Collective effects are observed in high-multiplicity pp events, similar to the signals traditionally attributed to the formation of a Quark Gluon Plasma in heavy ion collisions. In core--corona models it is assumed that a partial plasma formation is indeed possible also in pp, but here the focus is on several recent models that attempt to explain pp data without invoking plasma formation. These attempts are partly successful, but there is still not a unified framework.
Within of the framework of semiclassical approximation a general formalism for deriving an effective current generating bremsstrahlung of arbitrary number of soft gluons (longitudinal or transverse ones) in scattering of higher-energy parton off thermal parton in hot quark-gluon plasma with subsequent extension to two and more scatterers, is obtained. For the case of static color centers an expression for energy loss induced by usual bremsstrahlung of lowest-order with allowance for an effective temperature-induced gluon mass and finite mass of the projectile (heavy quark), is derived. The det…
We construct the energy-momentum tensor for the gauge fields which describe the collective excitations of the quark-gluon plasma. We rely on the description of the collective modes that we have derived in previous works. By using the conservation laws for energy and momentum, we obtain three different versions for the tensor $T^{μν}$, which are physically equivalent. We show that the total energy constructed from $T^{00}$ is positive for any non-trivial field configuration. Finally, we present a new non-abelian solution of the equations of motion for the gauge fields. This solution corresponds…
In this work, a covariant formulation of the gluon self-energy in presence of ellipsoidal anisotropy is considered. It is shown that the general structure of the gluon self-energy can be written in terms of six linearly independent projection tensors. Similar to the spheroidal anisotropy, mass scales can be introduced for each of the collective modes considering the static limits. With a simplified ellipsoidal generalization of the Romatschke-Strickland form, the angular dependencies of the mass scales are studied. It is observed that, compared to the spheroidal case, additional unstable mode …
After 15 years of heavy-ion collision experiments at the AGS and SPS, the recent turn-on of RHIC has initiated a new stage of quark-gluon plasma studies. I review the evidence for deconfined quark-gluon matter at SPS energies and the recent confirmation of some of the key ideas by the new RHIC data. Measurements of the elliptic flow at RHIC provide strong evidence for efficient thermalization during the very early partonic collision stage, resulting in a well-developed quark-gluon plasma with almost ideal fluid-dynamical collective behaviour and a lifetime of several fm/c.
We obtain the general expression of the gluon propagator at finite temperature ($T$) and in a magnetic field ($B$), for the case that the four transverse tensor structures appear in the gluon self-energy. By using this expression and a specific form of the one-loop gluon self-energy in the lowest Landau level approximation, we analyze the gluon spectrum in the strong magnetic field limit. As a result, we find that there exist two collective excitations of which the energies are of the order of $p\sim gT$ with $g$ being the coupling constant. One of the two excitations enjoys properties quite d…
The collective effect of emission by the forward moving partons of high energy Cherenkov gluons in nucleus-nucleus collisions at RHIC and LHC energies is considered. It can reveal itself as peaks in the pseudorapidity distribution of jets at midrapidities or as a ring-like structure of individual events in event-by-event analysis. The pseudorapidity distribution of centers of dense isolated groups of particles in HIJING model is determined. It can be considered as the background for Cherenkov gluons. If peaks above this background were found in experiment, they would indicate new collective ef…
Polarization and chirality are direct manifestations of quantum mechanics in the Quark Gluon Plasma as a relativistic fluid. This is one of the reasons why they are intriguing phenomena, that have attracted so much attention lately. In this talk I will review what is, in my view, the current theoretical understanding and highlight the most interesting recent result.
We deliver a new scheme to compute the quark propagator and the quark-gluon interaction vertex through the coupled Dyson-Schwinger equations (DSEs) of QCD. We take the three-gluon vertex into account in our calculations, and implement the gluon propagator and the running coupling function fitted by the solutions of their respective DSEs. We obtain the momentum and current mass dependence of the quark propagator and the quark-gluon vertex, and the chiral quark condensate which agrees with previous results excellently. We also compute the quark-photon vertex within this scheme and give the anoma…
We present new, non-abelian, solutions to the equations of motion which describe the collective excitations of a quark-gluon plasma at high temperature. These solutions correspond to longitudinal and transverse plane-waves propagating through the plasma.
We present new, non-abelian, solutions to the equations of motion which describe the collective excitations of a quark-gluon plasma at high temperature. These solutions correspond to spatially uniform color oscillations.
In the presence of collective flow a new model potential describing the interaction of the hard jet with scattering centers is derived based on the static color-screened Yukawa potential. The flow effect on jet quenching with detailed balance is investigated in pQCD. It turns out, considering the collective flow with velocity $v_z$ along the jet direction, the collective flow decreases the LPM destructive interference comparing to that in the static medium. The gluon absorption plays a more important role in the moving medium. The collective flow increases the energy gain from gluon absorption…
The heavy quark energy loss puzzle is explained by collective flow effects in a dynamic medium. The dead cone and LPM effect are found to be changed comparing to the static medium case. Instead of only one dead cone in the static medium, the collective flow induces two dead cones from two different kinds of processes. One is from the projectile emitting gluon process, the same as that in the static medium. The other is from the gluon emission off the exchanged gluon process, decreasing with increasing flow velocity $v_z$ along jet direction, which lead to the increase of heavy quark energy los…
We calculate the quark self-energy in a quark-gluon plasma that possesses an ellipsoidal momentum-space anisotropy in the local rest frame. By introducing additional transverse momentum anisotropy parameters into the parton distribution functions, we generalize previous results which were obtained for the case of a spheroidal anisotropy. Our results demonstrate that the presence of anisotropies in the transverse directions affects the real and imaginary parts of quark self-energy and, consequently, the self-energy depends on both the polar and azimuthal angles in the local rest frame of the ma…
We present results on the evolution of <p_t> with energy, for hadrons emerging from hadronization of a quark-gluon plasma possibly produced in high-energy heavy-ion collisions. We find that BNL-RHIC energy corresponds to the previously predicted plateau of <p_t>, reminiscent of the assumed first-order QCD phase transition. Heavy hadrons are the best messengers of the transverse flow stall.
When the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) - a system of deconfined quarks and gluons - is in a nonequilibrium state, it is usually unstable with respect to color collective modes. The instabilities, which are expected to strongly influence dynamics of the QGP produced in relativistic heavy-ion collisions, are extensively discussed under the assumption that the plasma is weakly coupled. We begin by presenting the theoretical approaches to study the QGP, which include: field theory methods based on the Keldysh-Schwinger formalism, classical and kinetic theories, and fluid techniques. The dispersion equa…
Fast thermalization and a strong build up of elliptic flow of QCD matter were investigated within the pQCD based 3+1 dimensional parton transport model BAMPS including bremsstrahlung $2 \leftrightarrow 3$ processes. Within the same framework quenching of gluonic jets in Au+Au collisions at RHIC can be understood. The development of conical structure by gluonic jets is investigated in a static box for the regimes of small and large dissipation. Furthermore we demonstrate two different approaches to extract the shear viscosity coefficient $η$ from a microscopical picture.
We introduce an efficient general method for calculating the self-energies, collective modes, and dispersion relations of quarks and gluons in a momentum-anisotropic high-temperature quark-gluon plasma. The method introduced is applicable to the most general classes of deformed anisotropic momentum distributions and the resulting self-energies are expressed in terms of a series of hypergeometric basis functions which are valid in the entire complex phase-velocity plane. Comparing to direct numerical integration of the self-energies, the proposed method is orders of magnitude faster and provide…
We discuss a collective effect, which can be possible in hadron--hadron collisions at superhigh energies, that is, a quasi-diffraction production of several white clusters of quarks and gluons. Being transformed into hadrons, such clusters are sources of the fastest particles, which move forward nearly parallel to each other.
The azimuthal anisotropies of the collective transverse flow of charged hadrons are investigated in a wide range of heavy-ion collision energies within the microscopic Parton-Hadron-String Dynamics (PHSD) transport approach which incorporates explicit partonic degrees-of-freedom in terms of strongly interacting quasiparticles (quarks and gluons) in line with an equation-of-state from lattice QCD as well as the dynamical hadronization and hadronic collision dynamics in the final reaction phase. The experimentally observed increase of the elliptic flow $v_2$ of charged hadrons with collision ene…
Similar to electromagnetic forces, strong interactions might induce such collective effects as Cherenkov and Mach waves. Their conical structure would be responsible for specific ring-like events. The theoretical and experimental arguments in favor of these phenomena are discussed and their most important features are described.
We analyse recent results on charged particle pseudo-rapidity densities from RHIC in the framework of the Dual String Model, in particular when including string fusion. The model, in a simple way, agrees with all the existing data and is consistent with the presence of the percolation transition to the Quark-Gluon Plasma already at the CERN-SPS. It leads to strict saturation of the particle (pseudo-)rapidity density, normalised to the number of participant nucleons, as that number increases. A comparison with recent WA98 data is presented.
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.
Bjorken scaling violation in deep inelastic electron-proton scattering (DIS) is related to the rise of hadronic cross sections by using the additive quark model. Of special interest is the connection between saturation in the low-$x$ behavior of the DIS structure functions (SF) and possible slow-down of the $pp$ cross section rise due to saturation effects. We also identify saturation effects in the DIS SF with phase transition that can be described by the Van der Waals equation of state.
We study the spectrum of light plasmons in the (gapped and gapless) two-flavor color superconducting phases and its connection with the chromomagnetic instabilities and the structure of the ground state. It is revealed that the chromomagnetic instabilities in the 4-7th and 8th gluonic channels correspond to two very different plasmon spectra. These spectra lead us to the unequivocal conclusion about the existence of gluonic condensates (some of which can be spatially inhomogeneous) in the ground state. We also argue that spatially inhomogeneous gluonic condensates should exist in the three-fla…
These lectures are an introduction to recent developments in the study of the high temperature phase of QCD by using weak coupling techniques. After a brief introduction to some techniques of quantum field theory at finite temperature, I proceed to an analysis of the various important scales and degrees of freedom of the quark-gluon plasma and focus on the effective theory for the collective modes which develop at the particular momentum scale $gT$, where $g$ is the gauge coupling and $T$ the temperature. A powerful technique to construct the effective theory is based on kinetic equations whic…
We study the collective quark excitations in an extremely anisotropic system of two interpenetrating streams of the quark-gluon plasma. In contrast to the gluon modes, all quark ones appear to be stable in such a system. Even more, the quark modes in the two-stream system are very similar to those in the isotropic plasma.
