A full implementation of the Boltzmann-Langevin equation for fermionic systems is introduced in a transport model for dissipative collisions among heavy nuclei. Fluctuations are injected in phase space and not, like in more conventional approaches, as a projection on suitable subspaces. The advantage of this model is to be specifically adapted to describe processes characterised by instabilities, like the formation of fragments from a hot nuclear system, and by dissipation, like the transparency in nucleus-nucleus collisions.
We investigate the occurrence of bifurcations in the dynamical trajectories depicting central nuclear collisions at Fermi energies. The quantitative description of the reaction dynamics is obtained within a new transport model, based on the solution of the Boltzmann-Langevin equation in three dimensions, with a broad applicability for dissipative fermionic dynamics. Dilute systems formed in central collisions are shown to fluctuate between two energetically favourable mechanisms: reverting to a compact shape or rather disintegrating into several fragments. The latter result can be connected to…
The propagation of heavy flavor through the quark gluon plasma has been treated commonly within the framework of Langevin dynamics, i.e. assuming the heavy flavor momentum transfer is much smaller than the light one. On the other hand a similar suppression factor $R_{AA}$ has been observed experimentally for light and heavy flavors. We present a thorough study of the approximations involved by Langevin equation by mean of a direct comparison with the full collisional integral within the framework of Boltzmann transport equation. We have compared the results obtained in both approaches which ca…
The Boltzmann-Langevin dynamics of harmonic modes in nuclear matter is analyzed within linear-response theory, both with an elementary treatment and by using the frequency-dependent response function. It is shown how the source terms agitating the modes can be obtained from the basic BL correlation kernel by a simple projection onto the associated dual basis states, which are proportional to the RPA amplitudes and can be expressed explicitly. The source terms for the correlated agitation of any two such modes can then be extracted directly, without consideration of the other modes. This facili…
We present a new method to introduce phase-space fluctuations in transport theories, corresponding to a full implementation of the Boltzmann-Langevin equation for fermionic systems. It is based on the procedure originally developed by Bauer et al. for transport codes employing the test particle method. In the new procedure, the Pauli principle is carefully checked, leading to a good reproduction of the correct fluctuations in the ``continuum limit'' ($h \to 0$). Accurate tests are carried out in one and two dimensional idealized systems, and finally results for a full 3D application are shown.…
In relativistic heavy-ion collisions, the production of heavy quarks at large transverse momenta is strongly suppressed compared to proton-proton collisions. In addition an unexpectedly large azimuthal anisotropy was observed for the emission of charmed hadrons in non-central collisions. Both observations pose challenges to the theoretical understanding of the coupling between heavy quarks and the quark-gluon plasma produced in these collisions. Transport models for the evolution of heavy quarks in a QCD medium offer the opportunity to study these effects - two of the most successful approache…
Correlations born before the onset of hydrodynamic flow can leave observable traces on the final state particles. Measurement of these correlations can yield important information on the isotropization and thermalization process. Starting from a Boltzmann-like kinetic theory in the presence of dynamic Langevin noise, we derive a new partial differential equation for the two-particle correlation function that respects the microscopic conservation laws. We illustrate how this equation can be used to study the effect of thermalization on long range correlations.
The propagation of heavy quarks in the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) has been often treated within the framework of the Langevin equation (LV), i.e. assuming the momentum transfer is small or the scatterings are sufficiently forward peaked, small screening mass $m_D$. We address a direct comparison between the Langevin dynamics and the Boltzmann collisional integral (BM) when a bulk medium is in equilibrium at fixed temperature. We show that unless the cross section is quite forward peaked ($m_D\cong T $) or the mass to temperature ratio is quite large ($M_{HQ}/T \gtrsim 8-10$) there are significan…
The Boltzmann-Langevin One-Body model (BLOB), is a novel one-body transport approach, based on the solution of the Boltzmann-Langevin equation in three dimensions; it is used to handle large-amplitude phase-space fluctuations and has a broad applicability for dissipative fermionic dynamics. We study the occurrence of bifurcations in the dynamical trajectories describing heavy-ion collisions at Fermi energies. The model, applied to dilute systems formed in such collisions, reveals to be closer to the observation than previous attempts to include a Langevin term in Boltzmann theories. The onset …
We study the consequences of different realizations of diffusion processes in relativistic Langevin simulations. We elaborate on the Ito-Stratonovich dilemma by showing how microscopically calculated transport coefficients as obtained from a Boltzmann/Fokker-Planck equation can be implemented to lead to an unambiguous realization of the Langevin process. Pertinent examples within the pre-point (Ito) and post-point (Hänggi-Klimontovich) Langevin prescriptions are worked out explicitly. Deviations from this implementation are shown to generate variants of the Boltzmann distribution as the statio…
Statistical properties of Fermionic Molecular Dynamics are studied. It is shown that, although the centroids of the single--particle wave--packets follow classical trajectories in the case of a harmonic oscillator potential, the equilibrium properties of the system are the quantum mechanical ones. A system of weakly interacting fermions as well as of distinguishable particles is found to be ergodic and the time--averaged occupation probabilities approach the quantum canonical ones of Fermi--Dirac and Boltzmann statistics, respectively.
The dynamics of fermionic many-body systems is investigated in the framework of Boltzmann-Langevin (BL) stochastic one-body approaches. Within the recently introduced BLOB model, we examine the interplay between mean-field effects and two-body correlations, of stochastic nature, for nuclear matter at moderate temperature and in several density conditions, corresponding to stable or mechanically unstable situations. Numerical results are compared to analytic expectations for the fluctuation amplitude of isoscalar and isovector densities, probing the link to the properties of the employed effect…
We study the utility of a complex Langevin (CL) equation as an alternative for the Monte Carlo (MC) procedure in the evaluation of expectation values occurring in fermionic many-body problems. We find that a CL approach is natural in cases where non-positive definite probability measures occur, and remains accurate even when the corresponding MC calculation develops a severe ``sign problem''. While the convergence of CL averages cannot be guaranteed in principle, we show how convergent results can be obtained in three examples ranging from simple one-dimensional integrals over quantum mechanic…
In this more pedagogical study we want to elucidate on stochastic aspects inherent to the (non-)equilibrium real time Green's function description (or `closed time path Green's function' -- CTPGF) of transport equations, the so called `Kadanoff-Baym equations'. As a toy model we couple a free scalar boson quantum field to an exemplaric heat bath with some given temperature T. It will be shown in detail that the emerging transport equations have to be understood as the ensemble average over stochastic equations of Langevin type. This corresponds to the equivalence of the influence functional ap…
In hot non-Abelian gauge theories, processes characterized by the momentum scale $g^2 T$ (such as electroweak baryon number violation in the very early universe) are non-perturbative. An effective theory for the soft ($|\vec{p}|\sim g^2 T$) field modes is obtained by integrating out momenta larger than $g^2 T$. Starting from the hard thermal loop effective theory, which is the result of integrating out the scale $T$, it is shown how to integrate out the scale $gT$ in an expansion in the gauge coupling $g$. At leading order in $g$, one obtains Vlasov-Boltzmann equations for the soft field modes…
To study the role of fluctuation in the collisional dynamics, Boltzmann- Langevin formalism is applied in a two dimensional scenario. The importance of collective flow towards the formation of hollow structure is exhibited in our simulation result. The observation of large clusters along the transverse direction indicates the non-equilibrium aspects of the fragmentation process in the late stage of the reaction.
Thermodynamic properties of a fermionic system close to the unitarity limit, where the 2-body scattering length |a| approaches infinity is studied at high temperature Boltzmann regime. For dilute systems the virial expansion coefficients in the Boltzmann regime are expected, from general arguments, to be universal. A model independent finite temperature T calculation of the third virial coefficient b3(T) is presented. At the unitarity limit, b3(T) = -0.48 is an universal number. The energy density up to the third virial expansion is derived. These results are relevant for dilute neutron matter…
Big-bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) is valuable as a means to constrain the physics of the early universe and it is the only probe of the radiation-dominated epoch. A fundamental assumption in BBN is that the nuclear velocity distributions obey Maxwell-Boltzmann (MB) statistics as they do in stars. Specifically, the BBN epoch is characterized by a dilute baryon plasma for which the velocity distribution of nuclei is mainly determined by the dominant Coulomb elastic scattering with mildly relativistic electrons. One must therefore deduce the momentum distribution for reacting nuclei from the multi-c…
We give a detailed derivation of the second-order (local) hydrodynamics for Boltzmann equation with an external force by using the renormalization group method. In this method, we solve the Boltzmann equation faithfully to extract the hydrodynamics without recourse to any ansatz. Our method leads to microscopic expressions of not only all the transport coefficients that are of the same form as those in Chapman-Enskog method but also those of the viscous relaxation times $τ_i$ that admit physically natural interpretations. As an example, we apply our microscopic expressions to calculate the tra…
The Compressed Baryonic Matter (CBM) experiment at the Facility for Anti-proton and Ion Research (FAIR) will provide new possibilities for charm-quark ($D$-meson) observables in heavy-ion collisions at low collision energies and high baryon densities. To predict the collective flow and nuclear modification factors of charm quarks in this environment, we apply a Langevin approach for the transport of charm quarks in the UrQMD (hydrodynamics + Boltzmann) hybrid model. Due to the inclusion of event-by-event fluctuations and a full (3+1) dimensional hydrodynamical evolution, the UrQMD hybrid appro…
We give a quantitative analysis of the dynamical properties of fermionic cold atomic gases in normal phase, such as the shear viscosity, heat conductivity, and viscous relaxation times, using the novel microscopic expressions derived by the renormalization group (RG) method, where the Boltzmann equation is faithfully solved to extract the hydrodynamics without recourse to any ansatz. In particular, we examine the quantum statistical effects, temperature dependence, and scattering-length dependence of the transport coefficients and the viscous relaxation times. The numerical calculation shows t…
Using the Boltzmann equation with a Langevin-like term describing the stochastic force in a baryon-photon plasma, we investigate the influence of the incoherent electron-photon scattering on the subhorizon evolution of the cosmic microwave radiation. The stochastic fluctuation caused by each collision on average is found to be small. Nevertheless, it leads to a significant Brownian drifting of the phase in the acoustic oscillation, and the coherent oscillations cannot be maintained during their dynamical evolution. As a consequence, the proposed Doppler peaks probably do not exist.
