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 relativistic hydrodynamics, which requires small values of $η/s$ throughout the entire evolution of the reaction in order to successfully describe the collective flow observables at RHIC. We show that the inclusion of non-unit fugacities will reduce $η/s$ in the hadronic phase, yet not sufficiently to be compatible with viscous hydrodynamics. We therefore conclude that the origin of the low viscosity matter at RHIC must be in the partonic phase of the reaction.
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…
In this article, we will briefly review the recent progress on hydrodynamic modeling and the extraction of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) specific shear viscosity with an emphasis on results obtained from the hybrid model VISHNU that couples viscous hydrodynamics for the macroscopic expansion of the QGP to the hadron cascade model for the microscopic evolution of the late hadronic stage.
One of the most remarkable features of the Quark Gluon Plasma is its nearly perfect fluidity behavior indicated by the small shear viscosity to entropy density ratio obtained from fitting relativistic viscous hydrodynamics flow harmonics to experimental data. In recent years, bulk viscosity has also been considered in the context of event-by-event relativistic hydrodynamics and it has been found to have a non-trivial interplay with shear viscosity. In this paper some of the issues are discussed that require further work when extracting the shear viscosity to entropy density ratio in the presen…
We extract the specific shear viscosity $η/s$ of nuclear matter for various temperatures and chemical potentials in the hadronic phase using data taken in high energy nuclear collisions. We use a blastwave parameterization of the final state of nuclear collisions, including non-equilibrium deformations of particle distributions due to shear stress in the Navier-Stokes approximation. We fit spectra and elliptic flow of identified hadrons for a variety of collision energies and impact parameters at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The systems analyz…
We investigate the influence of a temperature-dependent shear viscosity over entropy density ratio eta/s on the transverse momentum spectra and elliptic flow of hadrons in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions. We find that the elliptic flow in sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV Au+Au collisions at RHIC is dominated by the viscosity in the hadronic phase and in the phase transition region, but largely insensitive to the viscosity of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). At the highest LHC energy, the elliptic flow becomes sensitive to the QGP viscosity and insensitive to the hadronic viscosity.
The Green-Kubo relation and fluctuation-dissipation theorem are employed to calculate the shear viscosity $η$ of a finite hot nucleus directly from the width and energy of the giant dipole resonance (GDR) of this nucleus. The ratio $η/s$ of shear viscosity $η$ to entropy density $s$ is extracted from the experimental systematics of the GDR in copper, tin and lead isotopes at finite temperature $T$. These empirical results are then compared with the predictions by several independent models, as well as with almost model-independent estimations. Based on these results, it is concluded that the r…
Within a Boltzmann transport model, we demonstrate correlation between stopping observables and shear viscosity in central nuclear collisions at intermediate energies (on the order of 10 to 1000 MeV/nucleon). The correlation allows us to assess the viscosity of nuclear matter, by tuning the in-medium nucleon-nucleon cross section in our transport model to agree with nuclear stopping data. We also calculate the ratio of shear viscosity to entropy density to determine how close the system is to the universal quantum lower limit proposed in the context of ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions.
We investigate the shear viscosity of neutron star matter in the presence of an antikaon condensate. The electron and muon number densities are reduced due to the appearance of a $K^-$ condensate in neutron star matter, whereas the proton number density increases. Consequently the shear viscosity due to scatterings of electrons and muons with themselves and protons is lowered compared to the case without the condensate. On the other hand, the contribution of proton-proton collisions to the proton shear viscosity through electromagnetic and strong interactions, becomes important and comparable …
The shear viscosity of a gluon gas is calculated using the Green-Kubo relation. Time correlations of the energy-momentum tensor in thermal equilibrium are extracted from microscopic simulations using a parton cascade solving various Boltzmann collision processes. We find that the pQCD based gluon bremsstrahlung described by Gunion-Bertsch processes significantly lowers the shear viscosity by a factor of 3-8 compared to elastic scatterings. The shear viscosity scales with the coupling as 1/(alpha_s^2\log(1/alpha_s)). For a constant coupling constant the shear viscosity to entropy density ratio …
We calculate the shear viscosity $η$ of a quark plasma through the two-flavor Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model in the chiral limit, at finite temperature $T$, and baryon number chemical potential $μ_B$. We solve the Boltzmann equation by using in the collision term cross sections that are correct to leading order in the coupling constant. We find the ratio of shear viscosity to entropy density above and slightly below the chiral transition temperature to vary from 1.5 to 13 times the conjectured lower bound of $(4π)^{-1}$ depending on the chemical potential to temperature ratio. Ratio of shear v…
We have calculated the shear viscosity of pion medium, where propagating pion has some finite thermal width due to interaction with the low mass resonances, $σ$ and $ρ$. With the help of standard thermal field theoretical technique, the thermal width of the pion has been calculated from the pion self-energy diagram for $πσ$ and $πρ$ loops, where an effective Lagrangian density has been used for interaction part. We have found a very small value of shear viscosity by entropy density ratio ($η/s$), which is very close to the KSS bound.
We study the influence of a temperature-dependent shear viscosity over entropy density ratio $η/s$, different shear relaxation times $τ_π$, as well as different initial conditions on the transverse momentum spectra of charged hadrons and identified particles. We investigate the azimuthal flow asymmetries as a function of both collision energy and centrality. The elliptic flow coefficient turns out to be dominated by the hadronic viscosity at RHIC energies. Only at higher collision energies the impact of the viscosity in the QGP phase is visible in the flow asymmetries. Nevertheless, the shear …
Starting from a classical picture of shear viscosity we construct a stationary velocity gradient in a microscopic parton cascade. Employing the Navier-Stokes ansatz we extract the shear viscosity coefficient $η$. For elastic isotropic scatterings we find an excellent agreement with the analytic values. This confirms the applicability of this method. Furthermore for both elastic and inelastic scatterings with pQCD based cross sections we extract the shear viscosity coefficient $η$ for a pure gluonic system and find a good agreement with already published calculations.
We present the first calculation of the shear viscosity for two-flavor plane wave (FF) color superconducting quark matter. This is a member of the family of crystalline color superconducting phases of dense quark matter that may be present in the cores of neutron stars. The paired quarks in the FF phase feature gapless excitations on surfaces of crescent shaped blocking regions in momentum space and participate in transport. We calculate their contribution to the shear viscosity. We note that they also lead to dynamic screening of transverse $t^1$, $t^2$, $t^3$ gluons which are undamped in the…
It is well known that the difference between the chemical potentials of left-handed and right-handed particles in a parity violating (chiral) plasma can lead to an instability. We show that the chiral instability may drive turbulent transport. Further we estimate the anomalous viscosity of chiral plasma arising from the enhanced collisionality due to turbulence.
We compute the shear viscosity of two-flavor QCD plasma in an external magnetic field in perturbative QCD at leading log order, assuming that the magnetic field is weak or soft: $eB\sim g^4\log(1/g)T^2$. We show that the shear viscosity takes a form $η=\barη(\bar B)T^3/(g^4\log(1/g))$ with a dimensionless function $\barη(\bar B)$ in terms of a dimensionless variable $\bar B=(eB)/(g^4\log(1/g)T^2)$. The variable $\bar B$ corresponds to the relative strength of the effect of cyclotron motions compared to the QCD collisions: $\bar B\sim l_{mfp}/l_{cyclo}$. We provide a full numerical result for t…
Within the improved quantum molecular dynamic (ImQMD) model we follow the evolution of nuclear matter for planar Couette flow in a periodic box. We focus on the region of liquid-gas phase transition and extract the shear viscosity coefficient from the local stress tensor, directly following viscosity definition. By switching on and off the mean field and thus inducing the phase transition, we are able to observe the impact of clumping in the phase-transition region onto the viscosity.
We have computed shear viscosity coefficient for hot and dense QCD matter within Polyakov loop extended quark meson(PQM) model for three flavors. Viscosity coefficient is estimated using Boltzmann equation within the relaxation time approximation. Relaxation times for quarks are calculated from elastic scattering of quarks and antiquarks via gluon exchange. Also the mean free paths of strange and light quarks are estimated for this cases. The calculations are performed at finite chemical potential. Thermodynamic properties like energy, pressure, entropy densities are also computed and compared…
We have evaluated the shear viscosity of pion gas taking into account its scattering with the low mass resonances, $σ$ and $ρ$ during propagation in the medium. The thermal width (or collisional rate) of the pions is calculated from $πσ$ and $πρ$ loop diagrams using effective interactions in the real time formulation of finite temperature field theory. A very small value of shear viscosity by entropy density ratio ($η/s$), close to the KSS bound, is obtained which approximately matches the range of values of $η/s$ used by Niemi et al. \cite{Niemi} in order to fit the RHIC data of elliptic flow…
We estimate bulk and shear viscosity at finite temperature and baryon densities of hadronic matter within hadron resonance gas model. For bulk viscosity we use low energy theorems of QCD for the energy momentum tensor correlators. For shear viscosity coefficient, we estimate the same using molecular kinetic theory to relate the shear viscosity coefficient to average momentum of the hadrons in the hot and dense hadron gas. The bulk viscosity to entropy ratio increases with chemical potential and is related to the reduction of velocity of sound at nonzero chemical potential. The shear viscosity …
The fireball concept of Rolf Hagedorn, developed in the 1960's, is an alternative description of hadronic matter. Using a recently derived mass spectrum, we use the transport model GiBUU to calculate the shear viscosity of a gas of such Hagedorn states, applying the Green-Kubo method to Monte-Carlo calculations. Since the entropy density is rising ad infinitum near $T_H$, this leads to a very low shear viscosity to entropy density ratio near $T_H$. Further, by comparing our results with analytic expressions, we find a nice extrapolation behavior, indicating that a gas of Hagedorn states comes …
Shear viscosity ηand entropy density s of a hadronic resonance gas are calculated using the Chapman-Enskog and virial expansion methods using the K-matrix parametrization of hadronic cross sections which preserves the unitarity of the T -matrix. In the π-K-N-η- mixture considered, a total of 57 resonances up to 2 GeV were included. Comparisons are also made to results with other hadronic cross sections such as the Breit-Wigner (BW) and, where available, experimental phase shift parametrizations. Hadronic interactions forming resonances are shown to decrease the shear viscosity and increase the…
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.
We calculate for the first time the shear viscosity of ultrarelativistic Boson systems in the presence of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). Two different methods are used. One is the Grad's method of moments and another is the Green-Kubo relation within a kinetic transport approach. In this work we consider a Boson system with isotropic elastic collisions and a gluon system with elastic scatterings described by perturbation QCD (pQCD). The results show that the presence of a BEC lowers the shear viscosity. This effect becomes stronger for the increasing proportion of the BEC in the Boson syste…
We calculate the transport coefficient of hadronic matter in the presence of temperature and magnetic field using the linear sigma model. In the relaxation time approximation, we estimate the shear viscosity over entropy density $η/s$. The point-like interaction rates of hadrons are evaluated through the $S$-matrix approach in the presence of a magnetic field to obtain the temperature and magnetic field-dependent relaxation time. We observe that the transport coefficients are anisotropic in the presence of the magnetic field. We calculate the temperature and magnetic field-dependent anisotropi…
We compute the shear viscosity of QCD with matter, including almost all next-to-leading order corrections -- that is, corrections suppressed by one power of $g$ relative to leading order. We argue that the still missing terms are small. The next-to-leading order corrections are large and bring $η/s$ down by more than a factor of 3 at physically relevant couplings. The perturbative expansion is problematic even at $T \simeq 100$ GeV. The largest next-to-leading order correction to $η/s$ arises from modifications to the qhat parameter, which determines the rate of transverse momentum diffusion. …
The chromo-electromagnetic field fluctuations in the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) play an important role as these field fluctuations result energy gain of heavy quarks. We consider these fluctuations and evaluate the transport coefficients, e.g., drag and diffusion coefficients of charm quarks and shear viscosity to entropy density ratio ($η/s$) of the QGP. We find a significant effect of such fluctuations on the transport coefficients. These fluctuations cause a reduction of the drag and diffusion coefficients. We also observe that the shear viscosity to entropy density ratio of the QGP is closer…
We study evolution of quark-gluon matter in the ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions within the frame work of relativistic second-order viscous hydrodynamics. In particular, by using the various prescriptions of a temperature-dependent shear viscosity to the entropy ratio, we show that the hydrodynamic description of the relativistic fluid become invalid due to the phenomenon of cavitation. For most of the initial conditions relevant for LHC, the cavitation sets in very early during the evolution of the hydrodynamics in time $\lesssim 2 $fm/c. The cavitation in this case is entirely driven b…
We investigate the shear viscosity $η$ of the classical Yang-Mills (CYM) field on a lattice by using the Green-Kubo formula, where the shear viscosity is calculated from the time-correlation function of the energy-momentum tensor in equilibrium. Dependence of the shear viscosity $η(g,T)$ on the coupling $g$ and temperature $T$ is represented by a scaling function $f_η(g^2T)$ as $η(g,T)=Tf_η(g^2T)$ due to the scaling-invariant property of the CYM. The explicit functional form of $f_η(g^2T)$ is successfully determined from the calculated shear viscosity: It turns out that $η(g,T)$ of the CYM fie…
The gravitational formfactor similar to shear viscosity is identified. In the time-like region it corresponds to the contribution of exotic hybrid meson. The exotic quantum numbers may be considered as a counterpart of dissipation in crossed channel. The ratio of viscosity to entropy density is estimated. The smallness due to holographic bound corresponds to the relative smallness of coupling of hybrid meson and the intrinsic transverse momentum, being the dynamical counterpart of temperature.
We compute the energy and momentum deposited by a fast moving parton in a quark-gluon plasma using linear viscous hydrodynamics with an energy loss per unit length profile proportional to the path length and with different values of the shear viscosity to entropy density ratio. We show that when varying these parameters, the transverse modes still dominate over the longitudinal ones and thus energy and momentum is preferentially deposited along the head-shock, as in the case of a constant energy loss per unit length profile and the lowest value for the shear viscosity to entropy density ratio.
Among the key features of hot and dense QCD matter produced in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions at RHIC is its very low shear viscosity, indicative of the properties of a near-ideal fluid, and a large opacity demonstrated by jet energy loss measurements. In this work, we utilize a microscopic transport model based on the Boltzmann equation with quark and gluon degrees of freedom and cross sections calculated from perturbative Quantum Chromodynamics to simulate an ideal Quark-Gluon-Plasma in full thermal and chemical equilibrium. We then use the Kubo formalism to calculate the shear visc…
In this talk I report my recent study on the shear viscosity of neutron-rich nuclear matter from a relaxation time approach. An isospin- and momentum-dependent interaction is used in the study. Effects of density, temperature, and isospin asymmetry of nuclear matter on its shear viscosity have been discussed. Similar to the symmetry energy, the symmetry shear viscosity is defined and its density and temperature dependence are studied.
We have applied the Green-Kubo formula to investigate the shear viscosity in the SU(2) light-flavor quark matter at finite temperature under the external strong magnetic field e|B| ~ m^2_pi. For this purpose, we employ the temperature-modified instanton model and the Schwinger method to induce the magnetic field. The quark spectral function with the finite width motivated by the instanton model is adopted to compute the shear viscosity. We find that shear viscosity increases as temperature increases even beyond the transition temperature T_0=170 MeV if temperature-dependent (TDP) model paramet…
The ratio of bulk to shear viscosity is expected to exhibit a different behaviour in weakly and in strongly coupled systems. This can be expressed by its dependence on the squared sound velocity. In the high temperature QCD plasma at small running coupling, the viscosity ratio is uniquely determined by a quadratic dependence on the conformality measure, whereas in certain strongly coupled and nearly conformal theories this dependence is linear. Employing an effective kinetic theory of quasiparticle excitations with medium-modified dispersion relation, we analyze the ratio of bulk to shear visc…
We evaluate the shear viscosity of a pion gas in the relativistic kinetic theory approach. The in-medium propagator of the $ρ$ meson at finite temperature is used to evaluate the $π-π$ scattering amplitude in the medium. The real and imaginary parts of the self-energy calculated from one-loop diagrams are seen to have noticeable effects on the scattering cross-section. The consequences on temperature dependence of the shear viscosity evaluated in the Chapman-Enskog and relaxation time approximations are studied.
We investigate the microscopic origin of the relaxation time coefficient in relativistic fluid dynamics. We show that the extraction of the shear viscosity relaxation time via the gradient expansion is ambiguous and in general fails to give the correct result. The correct value for the shear viscosity relaxation time is extracted from the slowest non-hydrodynamic pole of the corresponding retarded Green's function, if such a pole is purely imaginary. According to the AdS/CFT correspondence, in strongly-coupled $\mathcal{N}=4$ SYM the non-hydrodynamic poles of the shear stress tensor nearest to…
We revisit the membrane paradigm calculations of the holographic shear viscosity tensor of strongly coupled isotropic plasmas with Einstein gravity dual by emphasizing the fact which was overlooked in the previous literatures that the shear viscosity is a fourth-rank tensor. Using the membrane paradigm we show that depending on whether the holographic shear viscosity tensor to entropy density ratio is η^j_i^j_i/s or η^{jiji}/s or η_{jiji}/s, we can derive three distinct formulae for the holographic shear viscosity tensor to entropy density ratios given explicitly in terms of the background met…
We investigate the shear viscosity of massless classical scalar fields in the $ϕ^4$ theory on a lattice by using the Green-Kubo formula. Based on the scaling property of the classical field, the shear viscosity is represented using a scaling function. Equilibrium expectation value of the time-correlation function of the energy-momentum tensor is evaluated as the ensemble average of the classical field configurations, whose time evolution is obtained by solving the classical equation of motion starting from the initial condition in thermal equilibrium. It is found that there are two distinct da…
In this paper we study the shear viscosity temperature dependence of $SU(3)$--gluodynamics within lattice simulation. To do so, we measure the correlation functions of energy-momentum tensor in the range of temperatures $T/T_c\in [0.9, 1.5]$. To extract the values of shear viscosity we used two approaches. The first one is to fit the lattice data with some physically motivated ansatz for the spectral function with unknown parameters and then determine shear viscosity. The second approach is to apply the Backus-Gilbert method which allows to extract shear viscosity from the lattice data nonpara…
The phonon contribution to the shear viscosity $η$ in superfluid neutron stars is calculated by assuming neutron pairing in a $^1S_0$ channel. The shear viscosity is obtained by means of variational methods for the solution of the Boltzmann equation amended by a collision term which takes into account the binary collisions of phonons. Effective field theory techniques are used to extract the phonon scattering rates in terms of the equation of state (EoS) of the system. We find that $η\propto 1/T^5$, the proportionality factor depending on the EoS of the system. Our results indicate that the ph…
Viscosity plays a critical role in determining the stability of rotating neutron stars. We report the results of a calculation of the shear viscosity of $β$~-~stable matter, carried out using an effective interaction based on a state-of-the-art nucleon-nucleon potential and the formalism of correlated basis functions. Within our approach the equation of state, determining the proton fraction, and the nucleon-nucleon scattering probability are consistently obtained from the same dynamical model. The results show that, while the neutron contribution to the viscosity is always dominant, above nuc…
Based on an improved isospin- and momentum-dependent interaction, we have studied the qualitative effect of isospin splitting of nucleon effective mass on the specific shear viscosity of neutron-rich nuclear matter from a relaxation time approach. It is seen that for $m_n^\star>m_p^\star$, the relaxation time of neutrons is smaller and the neutron flux between flow layers is weaker, leading to a smaller specific shear viscosity of neutron-rich matter compared to the case for $m_n^\star<m_p^\star$. The effect is larger in nuclear matter at higher densities, lower temperatures, and larger isospi…
We analyze how recent computations of the shear viscosity $η$ in the core of superfluid neutron stars affect the r-mode instability window. We first analyze the contribution of superfluid phonons to the viscosity, both in their hydrodynamical and ballistic regime. We also consider the recent computation of $η$ arising from the collisions of electrons with electrons and protons by Shternin and Yakovlev, and discuss how the interactions among superfluid phonons and electrons might contribute to the shear viscosity. For assessing the r-mode instability window we compare the shear viscosity due to…
The electron shear viscosity due to Coulomb scattering of degenerate electrons by atomic nuclei throughout a magnetized neutron star crust is calculated. The theory is based on the shear viscosity coefficient calculated neglecting magnetic fields but taking into account gaseous, liquid and solid states of atomic nuclei, multiphonon scattering processes, and finite sizes of the nuclei albeit neglecting the effects of electron band structure. The effects of strong magnetic fields are included in the relaxation time approximation with the effective electron relaxation time taken from the field-fr…
In this paper we provide a quantum field theoretical study on the shear and bulk relaxation times. First, we find Kubo formulas for the shear and the bulk relaxation times, respectively. They are found by examining response functions of the stress-energy tensor. We use general properties of correlation functions and the gravitational Ward identity to parametrize analytical structures of the Green functions describing both sound and diffusion mode. We find that the hydrodynamic limits of the real parts of the respective energy-momentum tensor correlation functions provide us with the method of …
We study the shear viscosity of a dilute Fermi gas as a function of the scattering length in the vicinity of the unitarity limit. The calculation is based on kinetic theory, which provides a systematic approach to transport properties in the limit in which the fugacity $z=nλ^3/2$ is small. Here, $n$ is the density of the gas and $λ$ is the thermal wave length of the fermions. At leading order in the fugacity expansion the shear viscosity is independent of density, and the minimum shear viscosity is achieved at unitarity. At the next order medium effects modify the scattering amplitude as well …
