We calculate the first four moments of baryon number, electric charge and strangeness fluctuations within the hadron resonance gas model. Different moments and their ratios as well as skewness and kurtosis are evaluated on the phenomenologically determined freeze-out curve in the temperature, baryon chemical potential plane. The model results and its predictions as well as relations between different moments are compared with the first data on net proton fluctuations in Au-Au collisions obtained at RHIC by the STAR Collaboration. We find good agreement between the model calculations and experimental results. We also point out that higher order moments should be more sensitive to critical behavior and will also distinguish hadron resonance gas model calculations from results obtained from lattice QCD.
The production and the observability of $Λ(1520)$, $K^0(892)$ $Φ$ and $Δ(1232)$ hadron resonances in central Pb+Pb collisions at 160 AGeV is addressed. The rescattering probabilities of the resonance decay products in the systems evolution are studied. Strong changes in the reconstructable particle yields and spectra between chemical and thermal freeze-out are estimated. Abundances and spectra of reconstructable resonances are predicted.
I)The production of multiple strange baryons in pp interactions is studied. Here on can directly probe the microscopic decay of color flux tubes, allowing to differentiate between different string models and a statistical description of the hadronization. II)To analyse the different stages of a heavy ion collision the time evolution of the elastic and inelastic collision rates in central Pb+Pb interactions are studied. The microscopic simulation supports the idea of separated phases (non-equilibrium -> chemical freeze-out -> kinetic freeze-out) in the evolution of the system. The spectra and a…
We discuss universal properties of higher order cumulants of net baryon number fluctuations and point out their relevance for the analysis of freeze-out and critical conditions in heavy ion collisions at LHC and RHIC.
Collider searches for long-lived particles yield a promising avenue to probe the freeze-in production of Dark Matter via the decay of a parent particle. We analyze the prospects of probing the parameter space of Dark Matter freeze-in from the decay of neutral parent particles at the LHC and beyond, taking as a case study a freeze-in Dark Matter scenario via the Standard Model Higgs. We obtain the projected sensitivity of the proposed MATHUSLA surface detector (for MATHUSLA100 and MATHUSLA200 configurations) for long-lived particle searches to the freeze-in Dark Matter parameter space, and stud…
New gauge bosons at the MeV scale with tiny gauge couplings (so-called dark photons) can be responsible for the freeze-in production of dark matter and provide a clear target for present and future experiments. We study the effects of thermal mixing between dark photons and Standard Model gauge bosons and of the resulting plasmon decays on dark matter production before and after the electroweak phase transition. In the parameter regions preferred by the observed dark matter relic abundance, the dark photon is sufficiently long-lived to be probed with fixed-target experiments and light enough t…
We introduce a novel approach based on elastic and inelastic scattering rates to extract the hyper-surface of the chemical freeze-out from a hadronic transport model in the energy range from E$_\mathrm{lab}=1.23$ AGeV to $\sqrt{s_\mathrm{NN}}=62.4$ GeV. For this study, the Ultra-relativistic Quantum Molecular Dynamics (UrQMD) model combined with a coarse-graining method is employed. The chemical freeze-out distribution is reconstructed from the pions through several decay and re-formation chains involving resonances and taking into account inelastic, pseudo-elastic and string excitation reacti…
We discuss the relevance of higher order moments of net baryon number fluctuations for the analysis of freeze-out and critical conditions in heavy ion collisions at LHC and RHIC. Using properties of O(4) scaling functions, we discuss the generic structure of these higher moments at vanishing baryon chemical potential and apply chiral model calculations to explore their properties at non-zero baryon chemical potential. We show that the ratios of the sixth to second and eighth to second order moments of the net baryon number fluctuations change rapidly in the transition region of the QCD phase d…
We suggest other decays which can more effectively identify the effect of rotational motion and presence of the magnetic field, compared to $Λ,\barΛ$ hyperon decayse used so far.
We present lattice QCD results along the freezeout curve of heavy-ion collisions for the ongoing RHIC energy scan as well as the LHC heavy-ion runs planned for this year. The skew and kurtosis of the event distribution of baryon number are positive at all energies studied, We predict three ratios of non-linear susceptibilities along the freezeout curve as functions of the colliding energy, Sqrt[S_{NN}]. They have smooth behaviour except in the vicinity of a critical point; this can have multiple benefits.
Two-particle femtoscopy reveals the space-time substructure of the freeze-out configuration from heavy ion collisions. Detailed fingerprints of bulk collectivity are evident in space-momentum correlations, which have been systematically measured as a function of particle type, three-momentum, and collision conditions. A clear scenario, dominated by hydrodynamic-type flow emerges. Reproducing the strength and features of the femtoscopic signals in models involves important physical quantities like the Equation of State, as well as less fundamental technical details. An interesting approximate "…
We present a determination of chemical freeze-out conditions in heavy ion collisions based on ratios of cumulants of net electric charge fluctuations. These ratios can reliably be calculated in lattice QCD for a wide range of chemical potential values by using a next-to-leading order Taylor series expansion around the limit of vanishing baryon, electric charge and strangeness chemical potentials. From a computation of up to fourth order cumulants and charge correlations we first determine the strangeness and electric charge chemical potentials that characterize freeze-out conditions in a heavy…
It is shown that the freezeout parameters estimated in the heavy-ion collisions all are well described by a constant value of the entropy density $s$ divided by $T^3$. The value of $s/T^3$ has been taken from the lattice QCD simulations at zero baryo-chemical potential $μ_B$ and assumed to remain constant for finite $μ_B$. This implies that the hadronic matter in rest frame of produced system can be determined by constant degrees of freedom. Furthermore, this condition has been used to predict the freezeout parameters at low temperatures.
We extend the usual treatment of two-particle momentum correlations to include the possibility of non-chaotic or correlated particle emission from the hadronic freeze-out surface in heavy-ion collisions. We adopt a modified two-particle emission density which permits the description of nontrivial differences between pair autocorrelations for different pair types. If different pair types sample nuclear radial or Hubble flow in different ways we predict a unique signature in two-particle momentum distributions. Analysis of such effects may provide detailed information on the small-scale structur…
For beam energies from SPS to RHIC, the transverse energy per charged particle, $E_T/N_{\textrm{ch}}$, saturates at a value of approximately 0.8 GeV. A direct connection between this value and the freeze-out criterium $E/N \approx 1$ GeV for the primordial energy and particle number in the hadronic resonance gas model is established.
We introduce a new prescription for obtaining the chemical freeze-out parameters in the heavy-ion collision experiments using the Hadron Resonance Gas model. The scheme is found to reliably estimate the freeze-out parameters and predict the hadron yield ratios, which themselves were never used in the parametrization procedure.
We explore net charge probability distributions in heavy ion collisions within the hadron resonance gas model. The distributions for strangeness, electric charge and baryon number are derived. We show that, within this model, net charge probability distributions and the resulting fluctuations can be computed directly from the measured yields of charged and multi-charged hadrons. The influence of multi-charged particles and quantum statistics on the shape of the distribution is examined. We discuss the properties of the net proton distribution along the chemical freeze-out line. The model resul…
Freeze-out conditions in Heavy Ion Collisions are generally determined by comparing experimental results for ratios of particle yields with theoretical predictions based on applications of the Hadron Resonance Gas model. We discuss here how this model dependent determination of freeze-out parameters may eventually be replaced by theoretical predictions based on equilibrium QCD thermodynamics.
We investigate chemical and thermal freeze-out time dependencies for strange particle production for CERN SPS heavy ion collisions in the framework of a dynamical hadronic transport code. We show that the Lambda yield changes considerably after hadronization in the case of Pb+Pb collisions, whereas for smaller system sizes (e.g. S+S) the direct particle production dominates over production from inelastic rescattering. Chemical freeze-out times for strange baryons in Pb+Pb are smaller than for non-strange baryons, but they are still sufficiently long for hadronic rescattering to contribute sign…
We calculate the mean and variance of net-baryon number and net-electric charge distributions from Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) using a next-to-leading order Taylor expansion in terms of temperature and chemical potentials. We compare these expansions with experimental data from STAR and PHENIX, determine the freeze-out temperature in the limit of vanishing baryon chemical potential, and, for the first time, constrain the curvature of the freeze-out line through a direct comparison between experimental data on net-charge fluctuations and a QCD calculation. We obtain a bound on the curvature co…
In relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions the transverse energy per charged particle, E_T/N_ch, increases rapidly with beam energy and remains approximately constant at about 800 MeV for beam energies from SPS to RHIC. It is shown that the hadron resonance gas model describes the energy dependence, as well as the lack of centrality dependence, qualitatively. The values of E_T/N_ch are related to the chemical freeze-out criterium E/N about 1 GeV valid for primordial hadrons.
The non-uniform longitudinal flow model (NUFM) propsed recently is extended to include also transverse flow. The resulting longitudinally non-uniform collective expansion model (NUCEM) is applied to the calculation of rapidity distribution of kaons, lambdas and protons in relativistic heavy ion collisions at CERN-SPS energies. The model results are compared with the 200 A GeV/$c$ S-S and 158 A GeV/$c$ Pb-Pb collision data. The central dips observed in experiments are reproduced in a natural way.
We study the sensitivity of the higher-order moments of produced particle multiplicity distributions to the chemical freeze-out parameters in relativistic heavy ion collisions using the Hadron Resonance Gas (HRG) model. We compare the obtained sensitivity level to the one extracted from the ratios of particle yields. We find that, for certain final state hadrons, the fluctuation measurements add significant information to the determination of the hadro-chemical freeze-out properties of the deconfined phase of matter obtained at RHIC and the LHC.
We discuss the production of light nuclei in heavy ion collisions within a multiple freezeout scenario. Thermal parameters extracted from the fits to the observed hadron yields are used to predict the multiplicities of light nuclei. Ratios of strange to non strange nuclei are found to be most sensitive to the details of the chemical freezeout. The well known disagreement between data of $^3_Λ\text{H/}^3\text{He}$ and $\overline{^3_Λ\text{H/}^3\text{He}}$ at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200$ GeV and models based on thermal as well as simple coalescence using a single chemical freezeout surface goes away when…
We have shown that recent experimental data on radial flow, both from AGS and SPS energies, are in agreement with the Equation of State (EOS) including the QCD phase transition. New hydro-kinetic model (HKM) is developed, which incorporates hydrodynamical treatment of expansion and proper kinetics of the freeze-out. We show that the freeze-out surfaces for different secondaries and different collisions are very different, and they are not at all isotherms (as was assumed in most previous hydro works). Comparison of HKM results with cascade-based event generator RQMD is also made in some detail…
We confront the hypothesis of chemical freeze-out in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions with the hypothesis of large modifications of hadron masses in nuclear medium. We find that the thermal-model predictions for the ratios of particle multiplicities are sensitive to the values of in-medium hadronic masses. In particular, the $π^+/p$ ratio decreases by 35% when the masses of all hadrons (except for pseudo-Goldstone bosons) are scaled down by 30%.
Probing displaced (dark)photons from low reheating freeze-in at the LHC
Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad San Sebastián（塞巴斯蒂安大学工程学院）；Millennium Institute for Subatomic Physics at the High-Energy Frontier (SAPHIR)（高能前沿亚原子物理千年研究所（SAPHIR））；Instituto de Física, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile（智利天主教大学物理研究所）；Instituto de Física, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de la República（共和国大学理学院物理研究所）；Sección Física, Departamento de Ciencias, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú（秘鲁天主教大学科学院物理组）
Hyperon resonances are becoming an extremely useful tool allowing the study of the properties of hadronic fireballs made in heavy ion collisions. Their yield, compared to stable particles with the same quark composition, depends on hadronization conditions. The resonance's short lifetime makes them ideal probes of the fireball chemical freeze-out mechanisms. An analysis of resonance abundance in heavy ion collisions should be capable of distinguishing between possible hadronization scenarios, in particular between sudden and gradual hadronization. In this paper, we review the existing SPS and …
It is demonstrated that there exists a direct correlation between chemical freeze-out point and the softest point of the equation of state where the pressure divided by the energy density, $p(ε)/ε$, has a minimum. A dynamical model is given as an example where the passage of the softest point coincides with the condition for chemical freeze-out, namely an average energy per hadron $\approx$ 1 GeV. The sensitivity of the result to the equation of state used is discussed.
In this paper we develop all the ingredients that come into play in the freeze-out of the heavy ion fireball for Au-Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$=200 GeV into dipions. The resonance production of particles that decay into dipions plus minijets that also decay into dipions are explored. The final state re-scattering of the pions from minijets play an important role in the mass spectrum of the cocktail. Mass shifts due to minijet interference which depend on the volume of the re-scattering pions is presented. The effective mass balance function is explained. The dipion mass spectrum within a …
The strong longitudinal expansion of the reaction zone formed in relativistic heavy-ion collisions is found to significantly reduce the spatially averaged pion phase-space density, compared to naive estimates based on thermal distributions. This has important implications for data interpretation and leads to larger values for the extracted pion chemical potential at kinetic freeze-out.
A strong magnetic field influences significantly the masses of the charged light mesons. For example, the mass of charged pion increases with the magnetic field increasing. We propose this mechanism as a possible way to extract the magnitude of magnetic field at freeze-out in heavy ion collisions and thus help constrain its lifetime which is currently a major open question to resolve. Specifically we show that the ratio between the yield of charged pions and that of charged rhos is very sensitive to the magnetic field value at freeze-out. By using a viscous-hydrodynamic framework (iEBE-VISHNU)…
We investigate the chemical freeze-out in heavy-ion collisions (HICs) and the impact of the hadronic spectrum on thermal model analyses. Detailed knowledge of the hadronic spectrum is still an open question, which has phenomenological consequences on the study of HICs. By varying the number of resonances included in Hadron Resonance Gas (HRG) Model calculations, we can shed light on which particles may be produced. Furthermore, we study the influence of the number of states on the so-called two flavor freeze-out scenario, in which strange and light particles can freeze-out separately. We consi…
We describe a procedure for determination of freeze-out parameters of heavy-ion collisions through direct comparisons between experimentally measured higher order cumulants of charge fluctuations and first principle (lattice) QCD calculations.
We argue that the chemical freeze-out in heavy ion collisions at high baryon density is not associated to a phase transition or rapid crossover. We employ the linear nucleon-meson model with parameters fixed by the zero-temperature properties of nuclear matter close to the liquid-gas quantum phase transition. For the parameter region of interest this yields a reliable picture of the thermodynamic and chiral properties at non-zero temperature. The chemical freeze-out observed in low-energy experiments occurs when baryon densities fall below a critical value of about 15 percent of nuclear densit…
We investigate the form of the viscous correction to the equilibrium distribution function in the context of a Cooper-Frye freeze out prescription for viscous hydrodynamic simulations of relativistic heavy ion collisions. The standard quadratic ansatz used by all groups for the case of shear viscosity is found to be disfavored by experimental data for v4/(v2)^2 at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, and is unlikely to be correct for the hadron resonance gas present at freeze out. Instead, data for v2(pt) along with v4/(v2)^2 favor a momentum dependence between linear and quadratic.
We analyze the hadronic freeze-out in ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions at RHIC in a transport approach which combines hydrodynamics for the early, dense, deconfined stage of the reaction with a microscopic non-equilibrium model for the later hadronic stage at which the hydrodynamic equilibrium assumptions are not valid. With this ansatz we are able to self-consistently calculate the freeze-out of the system and determine space-time hypersurfaces for individual hadron species. The space-time domains of the freeze-out for several hadron species are found to be actually four-dimensional, a…
We compare the statistical thermodynamics of hadron resonance gas with recent LGT results at finite chemical potential. We argue that for $T\leq T_c$ the equation of state derived from Monte--Carlo simulations of two quark--flavor QCD at finite chemical potential is consistent with that of a hadron resonance gas when applying the same set of approximations as used in LGT calculations. We indicate the relation of chemical freezeout conditions obtained from a detailed analysis of particle production in heavy ion collisions with the critical conditions required for deconfinement. We argue that th…
The influence of the nuclear Coulomb field on transverse spectra of $π^+$ and $π^-$ measured in $Pb+Pb$ reactions at 158 A GeV has been investigated. Pion trajectories are calculated in the field of an expanding fireball. The observed enhancement of the $π^-/π^+$ ratio at small momenta depends on the temperature and transverse expansion velocity of the source, the rapidity distribution of the net positive charge, and mainly the time of the freeze-out.
We determine the decoupling surfaces for the hydrodynamic description of heavy ion collisions at RHIC and LHC by comparing the local hydrodynamic expansion rate with the microscopic pion-pion scattering rate. The pion $p_T$ spectra for nuclear collisions at RHIC and LHC are computed by applying the Cooper-Frye procedure on the dynamical-decoupling surfaces, and compared with those obtained from the constant-temperature freeze-out surfaces. Comparison with RHIC data shows that the system indeed decouples when the expansion rate becomes comparable with the pion scattering rate. The dynamical dec…
We compare lattice QCD results for appropriate combinations of net strangeness fluctuations and their correlations with net baryon number fluctuations with predictions from two hadron resonance gas (HRG) models having different strange hadron content. The conventionally used HRG model based on experimentally established strange hadrons fails to describe the lattice QCD results in the hadronic phase close to the QCD crossover. Supplementing the conventional HRG with additional, experimentally uncharted strange hadrons predicted by quark model calculations and observed in lattice QCD spectrum ca…
We discuss systematic uncertainties in the chemical freeze-out parameters from the $χ^2$ analysis of hadron multiplicity ratios in the heavy-ion collision experiments. The systematics due to the choice of specific hadron ratios are found to lie within the experimental uncertainties. The variations obtained by removing the usual constraints on the conserved charges show similar behavior. The net charge to net baryon ratios in such unconstrained systems are commensurate with the expected value obtained from the protons and neutrons of the colliding nuclei up to the center of mass energies $\sim …
We revisit the problem of the production of light atomic nuclei in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions. While their production systematics is well produced by hadro-chemical freezeout at temperatures near the QCD pseudo-critical temperature, their small binding energies of a few MeV per nucleon suggest that they cannot survive as bound states under these conditions. Here, we adopt the concept of effective chemical potentials in the hadronic evolution from chemical to thermal freezeout (at typically $T_{\rm fo}$$\simeq$100\,MeV), which, despite frequent elastic rescatterings in hadronic matt…
We study chemical freeze-out parameters for heavy-ion collisions by performing two different thermal analyses. We analyze results from thermal fits for particle yields, as well as, net-charge fluctuations in order to characterize the chemical freeze-out. The Hadron Resonance Gas (HRG) model is employed for both methods. By separating the light hadrons from the strange hadrons in thermal fits, we study the proposed flavor hierarchy. For the net-charge fluctuations, we calculate the mean-over-variance ratio of the net-kaon fluctuations in the HRG model at the five highest energies of the RHIC Be…
The status of the energy dependence of the chemical freeze-out temperature and chemical potential obtained in heavy ion collisions is presented. Recent proposals for chemical freeze-out conditions are compared.
Detecting dark matter (DM) relic via freeze-in is difficult in laboratories due to smallness of the couplings involved. However, a non-standard cosmological history of the Universe, prior to Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN), can dramatically change this scenario. In this context, we study the freeze-in production of dark matter in classically scale invariant $U(1)_X$ gauge extension of the Standard Model (SM), recently dubbed as the \textit{Scale Invariant FIMP Miracle}. We assume an additional species dominates the energy density of the Universe at early times, causing the expansion rate at a g…
We present calculations of the chemical freeze-out temperature (T_ch) based on particle yields from STAR and ALICE measured at collision energies ranging from sqrt{s_{NN}} = 11.5 GeV to 5.02 TeV. Employing the Grand Canonical Ensemble approach using the Thermal-FIST Hadron Resonance Gas model package, we show evidence for a flavour-dependent chemical freeze-out in the crossover region of the QCD phase diagram. At a vanishing baryochemical potential, we calculate light and strange flavour freeze-out temperatures T_L = 150.2 +- 2.6 MeV and T_S = 165.1 +- 2.7 MeV, respectively.
Dissipative relativistic fluid-dynamical descriptions of the extended fireball formed in high-energy heavy-ion collisions are quite successful, yet require a prescription for converting the fluid into particles. We present arguments in favour of using a locally anisotropic momentum distribution for the particles emitted from the fluid, so as to smooth out discontinuities introduced by the usual conversion prescriptions. Building on this ansatz, we investigate the effect of the asymmetry on several observables of heavy ion physics.
The experimental data from the RHIC and LHC experiments of invariant pT spectra in A+A and p + p collisions are analysed with Tsallis distributions in different approaches. The information about the freeze-out surface in terms of freeze-out volume, temperature, chemical potential and radial flow velocity for different particle species are obtained. Further, these parameters are studied as a function of the mass of the secondary particles. A mass-dependent differential freeze-out is observed which does not seem to distinguish between particles and their antiparticles. Further a mass-hierarchy i…
Global evolution of the matter in relativistic collisions of heavy nuclei and the resulting global freeze-out parameters are analyzed in a wide range of incident energies 2.7 GeV $\le \sqrt{s_{NN}}\le$ 39 GeV. The analysis is performed within the three-fluid model employing three different equations of state (EoS): a purely hadronic EoS, an EoS with the first-order phase transition and that with a smooth crossover transition. Global freeze-out parameters deduced from experimental data within the statistical model are well reproduced within the crossover scenario. The 1st-order-transition scena…
We propose the entropy density as the thermodynamic condition driving best the chemical freeze-out in heavy-ion collisions. Taking its value from lattice calculations at zero chemical potential, we find that it is excellent in reproducing the experimentally estimated freeze-out parameters. The two characteristic endpoints in the freeze-out diagram are reproduced as well.
We introduce a new scenario for heavy ion collisions that could solve the lingering problems associated with the so-called HBT puzzle. We postulate that the system starts expansion as the perfect quark-gluon fluid but close to freeze-out it splits into clusters, due to a sharp rise of bulk viscosity in the vicinity of the hadronization transition. We then argue that the characteristic cluster size is determined by the viscosity coefficient and the expansion rate. Typically it is much smaller and independent of the total system volume. These clusters maintain the pre-existing outward-going flow…
Based on transport equations we argue that the chiral dynamics in heavy-ion collisions at high collision energies effectively decouples from the thermal physics of the fireball. With full decoupling at LHC energies the chiral condensate relaxes to its vacuum expectation value on a much shorter time scale than the typical evolution time of the fluid dynamical fields and their fluctuations. In particular, the net-baryon density remains coupled to the bulk evolution at all collision energies. As the mass scales of the hadrons are controlled by the chiral condensate, it is reasonable to employ vac…
