Quarks of other flavours than up and down, i.e. $s$, $c$, and $b$ quarks, have been long recognized as effective probes of the structure of hot QCD matter. In this talk, I review some of the motivations for their investigation and discuss the salient results obtained so far, with a focus on the results from the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). Some ideas for future studies are also mentioned.
Jets are a promising way to probe the non-equilibrium physics of quark-gluon plasma (QGP). We study how an out-of-equilibrium medium induces a jet particle to emit gluons. Evaluation of the emission rate is complicated by Weibel instabilities which lead to an exponential growth of chromomagnetic fields. Deriving a quantum field theoretical description of an unstable QGP medium, we show that the chromomagnetic fields deflect jet particles during the gluon emission.
Using kinetic theory, we analyze the interplay of elastic and inelastic collisions in the thermalization of the quark-gluon plasma. The main focus is the dynamics and equilibration of long wavelength modes.
The presence of thermal gluons reduces the stimulated gluon emission off a heavy quark propagating in the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) while absorption causes reduction of the radiative energy loss. On the other hand, the chromo-electromagnetic field fluctuations present in the QGP lead to collisional energy gain of the heavy quark. The net effect of the thermal gluon absorption and field fluctuations is a reduction of the total energy loss of the heavy quark, prominent at the lower momenta. We consider both kind of the energy gains along with the usual losses, and compute the nuclear modification…
The chromo-electromagnetic field is produced due to the motion of partons in a quark-gluon plasma created by relativistic heavy-ion collisions. The fluctuations in the produced chromo-electromagnetic field are important, since they cause heavy quarks to gain energy in the low velocity limit. We study the effect of such fluctuations on heavy quark diffusion in quark-gluon plasma within the framework of Langevin dynamics under the background matter described by the ($3+1$)-dimensional relativistic viscous hydrodynamics. Theoretical calculations of the nuclear modification factor ($R_{AA}$) of he…
We study the radiative correction to $p_T$-broadening of a fast quark in a quark-gluon plasma beyond the soft gluon approximation. We find that the radiative processes can suppress considerably $p_T$-broadening. This differs dramatically from previous calculations to logarithmic accuracy in the soft gluon approximation, predicting a considerable enhancement of $p_T$-broadening.
Brief review of the hadronic probes that are used to diagnose the quark-gluon plasma produced in relativistic heavy ion collisions and interrogate its properties. Emphasis is placed on probes that have significantly impacted our understanding of the nature of the quark-gluon plasma and confirmed its formation.
We study the color randomization of two-gluon states produced after splitting of a primary fast gluon in the quark-gluon plasma. We find that for the LHC conditions the color randomization of the $gg$ pairs is rather slow. At jet energies $E=100$ and $500$ GeV, for typical jet path length in the plasma in central Pb+Pb collisions, the $SU(3)$-multiplet averaged color Casimir of the $gg$ pair differs considerably from its value $2N_c$ for a fully randomized $gg$ state. Our calculations of the energy dependence for generation of the nearly collinear decuplet $gg$ states, that can lead to the bar…
We present a practical method for the solution of the quark-gluon vertex for use in Bethe--Salpeter and Dyson--Schwinger calculations. The efficient decomposition into the necessary covariants is detailed, with the numerical algorithm outlined for both real and complex Euclidean momenta. A truncation of the quark-gluon vertex, that neglects explicit back-coupling to enable the application to bound-state calculations, is given together with results for the quark propagator and quark-gluon vertex for different quark flavours. The relative impact of the various components of the quark-gluon verte…
We study the radiative correction to $p_\perp$-broadening of a fast quark in a quark-gluon plasma beyond the soft gluon approximation. We find that the radiative contribution to quark $\langle p_\perp^2\rangle$ for RHIC and LHC conditions is negative.
We study the influence of the magnetic field on the photon emission from the quark-gluon plasma created in $AA$ collisions. We find that even for very optimistic assumption on the magnitude of the magnetic field for noncentral $AA$ collisions the effect of magnetic field is very small.
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.
The incorporation of running $α_s$ for the gluon emission vertex in calculations of radiative parton energy loss in a quark-gluon plasma is discussed. It is argued that the virtuality scale for running $α_s$ for induced gluon emission is determined by the square of the transverse momentum of the emitted gluon rather than by the square of the invariant mass of the final two-parton state often used in the literature.
We study the electromagnetic response of the quark-gluon plasma in AA-collisions at RHIC and LHC energies for a realistic space-time evolution of the plasma fireball. We demonstrate that for a realistic electric conductivity the electromagnetic response of the plasma is in a quantum regime when the induced electric current does not generate a classical electromagnetic field, and can only lead to a rare emission of single photons.
Jets and photons could play an important role in finding the transport coefficients of the quark-gluon plasma. To this end we analyze their interaction with a non-equilibrium quark-gluon plasma. Using new field-theoretical tools we derive two-point correlators for the plasma which show how instabilities evolve in time. This allows us, for the first time, to derive finite rates of interaction with the medium. We furthermore show that coherent, long-wavelength instability fields in the Abelian limit do not modify the rate of photon emission or jet-medium interaction.
A Lagrangian density for viscous quark-gluon plasma has been constructed within the fluid-like QCD framework. Gauge symmetry is preserved for all terms inside the Lagrangian, except for the viscous term. The transition mechanism from point particle field to fluid field, and vice versa, is discussed. The energy momentum tensor that is relevant for the gluonic plasma having the nature of fluid bulk of gluon sea is derived within the model. By imposing conservation law in the energy momentum tensor, shear viscosity appears as extractable from the equation.
