We study the onset of bubble formation (cavitation) in the quark-gluon plasma as a result of the reduction of the effective pressure from bulk-viscous corrections. By calculating velocity gradients in typical models for quark-gluon plasma evolution in heavy-ion collisions, we obtain results for the critical bulk viscosity above which cavitation occurs. Since present experimental data for heavy-ion collisions seems inconsistent with the presence of bubbles above the phase transition temperature of QCD, our results may be interpreted as an upper limit of the bulk viscosity in nature. Our results indicate that bubble formation is consistent with the expectation of hadronisation in low-temperature QCD.
We study the effects of a finite chemical potential on the occurrence of cavitation in a quark gluon plasma (QGP). We solve the evolution equations of second order viscous relativistic hydrodynamics using three different equations of state. The first one was derived in lattice QCD and represents QGP at zero chemical potential. It was previously used in the study of cavitation. The second equation of state also comes from lattice QCD and is a recent parametrization of the QGP at finite chemical potential. The third one is similar to the MIT equation of state with chemical potential and includes…
If the bulk viscosity of QCD matter is large, the effective pressure of the hot and dense matter created in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions can become negative, leading to instabilities in the evolution of the plasma. In the context of heavy ion collisions, this effect is sometimes referred to as cavitation. In this contribution we discuss the onset of cavitation in event-by-event hydrodynamic simulations of ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions at LHC energies. We estimate how large the bulk viscosity of the QGP has to be in the QCD (pseudo) phase transition region in order for the ef…
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 solve second order relativistic hydrodynamics equations for a boost-invariant 1+1-dimensional expanding fluid with an equation of state taken from lattice calculations of the thermodynamics of strongly coupled quark-gluon plasma. We investigate the dependence of the energy density as a function of proper time on the values of the shear viscosity, the bulk viscosity, and second order coefficients, confirming that large changes in the values of the latter have negligible effects. Varying the shear viscosity between zero and a few times s/(4 pi), with s the entropy density, has significant eff…
We report on recent studies of the phenomenon of color decoherence in jets in QCD media. The effect is most clearly observed in the radiation pattern of a quark-antiquark antenna, created in the same quantum state, traversing a dense color deconfined plasma. Multiple scattering with the medium color charges gradually destroys the coherence of the antenna. In the limit of opaque media this ultimately leads to independent radiation off the antenna constituents. Accordingly, radiation off the total charge vanishes implying a memory loss effect induced by the medium.
A strong $J/ψ$ suppression in central Au+Au collisions has been observed by the PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). We develop a hydro+$J/ψ$ model in which hot quark-gluon matter is described by the full (3+1)-dimensional relativistic hydrodynamics and $J/ψ$ is treated as an impurity traversing through the matter. The experimental $J/ψ$ suppression pattern in mid-rapidity is reproduced well by the sequential melting of $χ_{\rm c}$, $ψ'$, and $J/ψ$ in dynamically expanding fluid. The melting temperature of directly produced $J/ψ$ is well constrained by the participa…
We study the evolution of a gluon system under conditions of density and temperature similar to those explored in the early stage of ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions. We first describe the implementation of Relativistic Boltzmann-Nordheim (RBN) transport approach that includes in the collision integral the quantum effects of Bose-Einstein Statistics. Then, we describe the evolution of a spatially uniform gluon system in a box under elastic collisions solving the RBN for various initial conditions. We discuss the critical phase-space density that leads to the onset of a Bose-Einstein con…
We study the transport equation describing a dense system of gluons, in the small scattering angle approximation, taking into account medium-generated effective masses of the gluons. We focus on the case of overpopulated systems that are driven to Bose-Einstein condensation on their way to thermalization. The presence of a mass modifies the dispersion relation of the gluon, as compared to the massless case, but it is shown that this does not change qualitatively the scaling behavior in the vicinity of the onset.
The pre-equilibrium evolution of a quark-gluon plasma produced in a heavy-ion collision is studied in the framework of kinetic theory. We discuss the approach to local thermal equilibrium, and the onset of hydrodynamics, in terms of a particular set of moments of the distribution function. These moments quantify the momentum anisotropies to a finer degree than the commonly used ratio of longitudinal to transverse pressures. They are found to be in direct correspondence with viscous corrections of hydrodynamics, and provide therefore an alternative measure of these corrections in terms of the d…
We investigate photo-production of vector mesons J/Psi and Upsilon measured both at HERA and LHC, using 2 particular fits of inclusive unintegrated gluon distributions, based on non-linear Balitsky-Kovchegov evolution (Kutak-Sapeta gluon; KS) and next-to-leading order Balitsky-Fadin-Kuraev-Lipatov evolution (Hentschinski-Sabio Vera-Salas gluon; HSS). We find that linear next-to-leading order evolution can only describe production at highest energies, if perturbative corrections are increased to unnaturally large values; rendering this corrections to a perturbative size, the growth with energy …
The early stages of heavy ion collisions are dominated by high density systems of gluons that carry each a small fraction $x$ of the momenta of the colliding nucleons. A distinguishing feature of such systems is the phenomenon of "saturation" which tames the expected growth of the gluon density as the energy of the collision increases. The onset of saturation occurs at a particular transverse momentum scale, the "saturation momentum", that emerges dynamically and that marks the onset of non-linear gluon interactions. At high energy, and for large nuclei, the saturation momentum is large compar…
A number of promising results of a new 3+1 dimensional Monte Carlo parton cascade including inelastic multiplication processes (gg <--> ggg) are elaborated: (1) thermalization and chemical saturation; (2) the onset of longitudinal hydrodynamical expansion; (3) the build up of elliptic flow. We first briefly outline the basic idea of the algorithm. Full simulations are done with initial conditions for the kinetic partons via minijets or with ones stemming from a color glass condensate. The inclusion of the inelastic channels leads to a very fast kinetic equilibration and also to an early creati…
We investigate the energy dependence of the photo-production cross-section of vector mesons $J/Ψ$ and $Υ$, measured by both HERA experiments H1 and ZEUS in electron-proton collisions and by LHC experiments ALICE, CMS and LHCb in ultra-peripheral proton-proton and ultra-peripheral proton-lead collisions. Our study uses 2 particular fits of inclusive unintegrated gluon distribution, based on non-linear Balitsky-Kovchegov evolution (Kutak-Sapeta gluon; KS) and next-to-leading order Balitsky-Fadin-Kuraev-Lipatov evolution (Hentschinski-Sabio Vera-Salas gluon; HSS). We find that linear next-to-lead…
Recent studies of the hot QCD matter indicate that the bulk viscosity ($ζ$) of quark-gluon plasma (QGP) rises sharply near the critical point of the QCD phase transition. In this work, we show that such a sharp rise of the bulk viscosity will lead to an effective negative pressure near the critical temperature, $T_{c}$ which in turn drives the Universe to inflate. This inflation has a natural graceful exist when the viscous effect evanesce. We estimate that, depending upon the peak value of $ζ$, universe expands by a factor of $10$ to $80$ times in a very short span ($Δt\sim 10^{-8}$ seconds).…
In this paper, we study the evolution of a dense system of gluons, such as those produced in the early stages of ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions. We describe the approach to thermal equilibrium using the small angle approximation for gluon scattering in a Boltzmann equation that includes the effects of Bose statistics. In the present study we ignore the effect of the longitudinal expansion, i.e., we restrict ourselves to spatially uniform systems, with spherically symmetric momentum distributions. Furthermore we take into account only elastic scattering, i.e., we neglect inelastic, num…
Theoretical studies on the early-time dynamics in the ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions are reviewed including pedagogical introductions on the initial condition with small-x gluons treated as a color glass condensate, the bottom-up thermalization scenario, plasma/glasma instabilities, basics of some formulations such as the kinetic equations and the classical statistical simulation. More detailed discussions follow to make an overview of recent developments on the fast isotropization, the onset of hydrodynamics, and the transient behavior of momentum spectral cascades.
We calculate the medium dilepton yield from a quark-gluon plasma which has a time-dependent local momentum-space anisotropy. A phenomenological model for the hard momentum scale, p_hard(tau), and plasma anisotropy parameter, xi(tau), is constructed which interpolates between free streaming behavior at early times (tau << tau_iso) and ideal hydrodynamic behavior at late times (tau >> tau_iso). We show that high-energy dilepton production is sensitive to the assumed plasma isotropization time, tau_iso, and can therefore be used to experimentally determine the time of onset for hydrodynamic expan…
We explore the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of the Quark-Gluon Plasma at zero and finite net-baryon density based on an effective kinetic theory of Quantum Chromo Dynamics (QCD). By investigating the isotropization of the longitudinal pressure, we determine the relevant time and temperature scales for the onset of viscous hydrodynamics, and quantify the dependence on the chemical composition of the QGP. By extrapolating our results to realistic coupling strength, we discuss phenomenological consequences regarding the role of the pre-equilibrium phase at different collision energies.
We study the mechanism responsible for the onset of instabilities in a chiral phase transition at nonzero temperature and baryon chemical potential. As a low-energy effective model, we consider an expanding relativistic plasma of quarks coupled to a chiral field, and obtain a phenomenological chiral hydrodynamics from a variational principle. Studying the dispersion relation for small fluctuations around equilibrium, we identify the role played by chiral waves and pressure waves in the generation of instabilities. We show that pressure modes become unstable earlier than chiral modes.
We discuss prompt production of $J/ψ$ mesons in proton-proton collisions at the LHC within NRQCD $k_t$-factorization approach using Kimber-Martin-Ryskin (KMR) unintegrated gluon distributions (UGDF). We include both direct color-singlet production ($g g \to J/ψg$) as well as a feed-down from $χ_c \to J/ψγ$ and $ψ' \to J/ψX$ decays. The production of the decaying mesons ($χ_c$ or $ψ'$) is also calculated within NRQCD $k_t$-factorization approach. The corresponding matrix elements for $g g \to J/ψ$ g, $g g \to ψ'g$ and $g g \to χ_c$ include parameters of the nonrelativistic space wave functions …
We study photon-induced coherent production of Upsilon in ultraperipheral heavy ion collisions at LHC and demonstrate that the counting rates will be sufficient to measure nuclear shadowing of generalized gluon distributions. This will establish the transition from the regime of color transparency to the regime of perturbative color opacity in an unambiguous way. We argue that such measurements will provide the possibility to investigate the interaction of ultra-small color dipoles with nuclei in QCD at large energies, which are beyond the reach of the electron-nucleon (nucleus) colliders, and…
We investigate the transition from the nucleon-meson to quark-gluon description of the strong interaction using the photon energy dependence of the $d(γ,p)n$ differential cross section for photon energies above 0.5 GeV and center-of-mass proton angles between $30^{\circ}$ and $150^{\circ}$. A possible signature for this transition is the onset of cross section $s^{-11}$ scaling with the total energy squared, $s$, at some proton transverse momentum, $P_T$. The results show that the scaling has been reached for proton transverse momentum above about 1.1 GeV/c. This may indicate that the quark-gl…
We introduce a nonperturbative interaction for light-cone fluctuations containing quarks and gluons. The $\bar qq$ interaction squeezes the transverse size of these fluctuations in the photon and one does not need to simulate this effect via effective quark masses. The strength of this interaction is fixed by data. Data on diffractive dissociation of hadrons and photons show that the nonperturbative interaction of gluons is much stronger. We fix the parameters for the nonperturbative quark-gluon interaction by data for diffractive dissociation to large masses (triple-Pomeron regime). This allo…
The paper briefly presents history, status, and plans of the search for the critical structures - the onset of fireball, the onset of deconfinement, and the deconfinement critical point - in high energy nucleus-nucleus collisions. First, the basic ideas are introduced, the history of the observation of strongly interacting matter in heavy ion collisions is reviewed, and the path towards the quark-gluon plasma discovery is sketched. Then the status of the search for critical structures is discussed - the discovery of the onset of deconfinement, indications for the onset of fireball, and still i…
The chemical equilibration of the parton distribution in collisions of two heavy nuclei at the CERN Large Hadron Collider is investigated. Initial conditions are obtained from a self-screened parton cascade calculation. The onset of transverse expansion of the system is found to impede the chemical equilibration. The system initially approaches chemical equilibrium, but then is driven away from it, when the transverse velocity becomes large.
Evidence for the energy threshold of creating the quark-gluon plasma in nucleus-nucleus collisions, the so-called onset of deconfinement, has been found by the energy scan program of the NA49 experiment at the CERN SPS. In this paper we review the experimental and theoretical status of this phenomenon. First, the basic, qualitative ideas are presented for non-experts. Next, the latest experimental results are compared to a statistical model within which the onset of deconfinement and its signals had been predicted. Finally, alternative interpretations and open questions are discussed.
We report recent progress on understanding the thermalization of the quark-gluon plasma during the early stage in a heavy ion collision. The initially high overpopulation in the pre-equilibrium gluonic matter (``glasma'') is shown to play a crucial role. The strongly interacting nature (and thus fast evolution) naturally arises as an {\em emergent property} of this pre-equilibrium matter where the intrinsic coupling is weak but the highly occupied gluon states coherently amplify the scattering. A possible transient Bose-Einstein Condensate is argued to form dynamically on a rather general grou…
Using a simple kinetic model we study whether a pion condensate can be formed during the hadronization of the quark-gluon plasma in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions. If hadronization proceeds fast and the pion effective mass is close to zero, some pions condense into the zero momentum state. On the other hand, for the pion effective mass equal to the vacuum one or larger no onset of the Bose-Einstein condensation is observed. The constraints on the condensation process coming from the requirement of the entropy increase are discussed in detail.
In relativistic heavy ion collisions, a highly occupied gluonic matter is created shortly after initial impact, which is in a non-thermal state and often referred to as the Glasma. Successful phenomenology suggests that the glasma evolves rather quickly toward the thermal quark-gluon plasma and a hydrodynamic behavior emerges at very early time $\sim \hat{o}(1)$ fm/c. Exactly how such "apparent thermalization" occurs and connects the initial conditions to the hydrodynamic onset, remains a significant challenge for theory as well as phenomenology. We briefly review various ideas and recent prog…
In this paper, we study the thermalization of gluons and N_f flavors of massless quarks and antiquarks in a spatially homogeneous system. First, two coupled transport equations for gluons and quarks (and antiquarks) are derived within the diffusion approximation of the Boltzmann equation, with only 2<-> 2 processes included in the collision term. Then, these transport equations are solved numerically in order to study the thermalization of the quark-gluon plasma. At initial time, we assume that no quarks or antiquarks are present and we choose the gluon distribution in the form f = f_0 theta (…
A brief summary of strangeness mile stones is followed by a chemical non-equilibrium statistical hadronization analysis of strangeness results at SPS and RHIC. Strange particle production in AA interactions at \sqrt{s_{NN}}\ge 8.6 GeV can be understood consistently as originating from the deconfined quark--gluon plasma in a sudden hadronization process. Onset of QGP formation as function of energy is placed in the beam energy interval 10--30A GeV/c. Strangeness anomalies at LHC are described.
Color superconductivity in QCD breaks the SU(3) color gauge group down to SU(2), inducing masses in five of the eight gluons. This is a dynamical Higgs effect, in which the diquark condensate acts as the vacuum expectation value of a composite scalar field. In order to analyze this effect at low quark density, when gaps are large and generated nonperturbatively, we use instanton-induced quark interactions augmented with gauge-invariant interactions between quarks and perturbative gluons. The five gluon masses are found from the static limit of the relevant polarization operators, in which tran…
We calculate the rapidity dependence of leading-order medium dilepton yields resulting from a quark-gluon plasma which has a local time-dependent anisotropy in momentum space. We present a phenomenological model which includes temporal evolution of the plasma anisotropy parameter, xi, and the hard momentum scale, p_hard. Our model interpolates between 1+1 dimensional collisionally-broadened expansion at early times and 1+1 dimensional ideal hydrodynamic expansion at late times. Using our model, we find that at LHC energies, forward high-energy medium dilepton production would be suppressed by …
The spectrum of gluon excitations in the presence of a static quark-antiquark pair is presented. Our results are obtained from computer simulations of gluons on anisotropic space-time lattices using an improved gauge-field action. Measurements for quark-antiquark separations r ranging from 0.1 fm to 4 fm and for various orientations on the lattice are made. Discretization errors and finite volume effects are taken into account. Surprisingly, the spectrum does not exhibit the expected onset of the universal pi/r Goldstone excitations of the effective QCD string, even for r as large as 4 fm.
In high energy Heavy Ion Collisions, the onset of the quark-gluon plasma is the colour glass condensate, dominated by gluons. The final state is hadronic, and dominated by pions and kaons. Here we investigate an effective approach of QCD with these bosonic fields and which can help to describe the transition of gluons into light mesons. Formally, our approach consists in integrating out the quark fields from the QCD path integral, utilizing auxiliary fields. In this way the fermionic fields are replaced by light mesons, such as the pions and sigma field. We apply our effective action to comput…
In heavy-ion collisions, an abundant production of high-energy QCD jets allows to study how these multiparticle sprays are modified as they pass through the quark-gluon plasma. In order to shed new light on this process, we compute the inclusive two-gluon rate off a hard quark propagating through a color deconfined medium at first order in medium opacity. We explicitly impose an energy ordering of the two emitted gluons, such that the "hard" gluon can be thought of as belonging to the jet substructure while the other is a "soft" emission (which can be collinear or medium-induced). Our analysis…
Compact astrophysical objects are a window for the study of strongly interacting nuclear matter given the conditions in their interiors, which are not reproduced in a laboratory environment. Much has been debated about their composition with possibilities ranging from a simple mixture of mostly protons and neutrons to deconfined quark matter. Recent observations on the mass of two pulsars, PSR J1614-2230 and PSR J0348+0432, have posed a great restriction on their composition, since the equation of state must be hard enough to support masses of about at least two solar masses. The onset of quar…
Going beyond the simplified gluonic cascades, we introduce both gluon and quark degrees of freedom for partonic cascades inside the medium. We then solve the set of coupled evolution equations numerically with splitting kernels calculated for static, exponential, and Bjorken expanding media to arrive at medium-modified parton spectra for quark and gluon initiated jets. Using these, we calculate the inclusive jet $R_{AA}$ where the phenomenologically driven combinations of quark and gluon jet fractions are included. Then, the rapidity dependence of the jet $R_{AA}$ is examined. We also study th…
We investigate the thermalization and the chemical equilibration of a parton plasma created from Au+Au collision at LHC and RHIC energies starting from the early moment when the particle momentum distributions in the central region become for the first time isotropic due to longitudinal cooling. Using the relaxation time approximation for the collision terms in the Boltzmann equations for gluons and for quarks and the real collision terms constructed from the simplest QCD interactions, we show that the collision times have the right behaviour for equilibration. The magnitude of the quark (anti…
We investigate the finite-size effects on the transition temperature associated with the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) formation. From a percolation perspective, the onset of the QGP in high-energy collisions occurs when the spanning cluster of color strings emerges. The principal result presented here is the finite-size effects on the transition temperature expressed as a power law in terms of the nucleon number. We found that the transition temperature is higher for small systems than for large ones. It means that minimal triggering conditions events in pp collisions require about twenty times hi…
We propose a new class of defects in QCD which can be viewed as ``embedded'' monopoles made of quark and gluon fields. These objects are explicitly gauge-invariant and they closely resemble the Nambu monopoles in the Standard Electroweak model. We argue that the ``embedded QCD monopoles'' are proliferating in the quark gluon plasma phase while in the low-temperature hadronic phase the spatial proliferation of these objects is suppressed. At realistic quark masses and zero chemical potential the hadronic and quark-gluon phases are generally believed to be connected by a smooth crossover across …
The onset of thermalization in heavy ion collisions in the weak coupling framework can be viewed as a transition from the initial state Color Glass Condensate dynamics, characterized by the energy density scaling like $ε\sim 1/τ$ with $τ$ the proper time, to the hydrodynamics-driven expansion of the quark-gluon plasma with $ε\sim 1/τ^{4/3}$ (or higher power of $1/τ$ for the boost non-invariant case). We argue that, at any order of the perturbative expansion in the QCD coupling constant, the gluon field generated in an ultrarelativistic heavy ion collision leads to energy density scaling as $ε\…
In this work, we introduce both gluon and quark degrees of freedom for describing the partonic cascades inside the medium. We present numerical solutions for the set of coupled evolution equations with splitting kernels calculated for the static, exponential and Bjorken expanding media to arrive at medium-modified parton spectra for quark and gluon initiated jets respectively. We discuss novel scaling features of the partonic spectra between different types of media. Next, we study the inclusive jet $R_{AA}$ by including phenomenologically driven combinations of quark and gluon fractions insid…
The Color String Percolation Model (CSPM) is used to determine the equation of state (EOS) of the QGP produced in central Au-Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 200 A GeV using STAR data at RHIC. When the initial density of interacting colored strings exceeds the 2D percolation threshold a cluster is formed, which defines the onset of color deconfinement. These interactions also produce fluctuations in the string tension which transforms the Schwinger particle (gluon) production mechanism into a maximum entropy thermal distribution. The single string tension is determined by identifying the kno…
We discuss dilepton production from a quark-gluon plasma which has a time-dependent anisotropy in momentum space. A phenomenological model for the hard momentum scale, p_hard(tau) and the plasma anisotropy parameter, xi(tau), is presented. The model interpolates between early-time 1+1 free streaming behavior (tau << tau_iso) and late-time ideal 1+1 hydrodynamical behavior (tau >> tau_iso). Using this model, we find that the dilepton rate arising from electromagnetic annihilations of quarks in the kinematic range 3 <p_T< 8 GeV is sensitive to the assumed isotropization time of the system, tau_i…
Using the grand canonical ensemble formulation of a multi-particle statistical system, the thermodynamical description of the dual QCD has been presented in terms of the bag model of hadrons and analyzed for the quark-gluon plasma phase of hadronic matter. The dual QCD bag construction has been shown to lead to the radial pressure on the bag surface in terms of the vector glueball masses of the magnetically condensed QCD vacuum. Constructing the grand canonical partition function to deal with the quark-gluon plasma phase of the non-strange hadrons, the energy density and the plasma pressure ha…
In QCD, the Schwinger mechanism endows the gluons with an effective mass through the dynamical formation of massless bound-state poles that are longitudinally coupled. The presence of these poles affects profoundly the infrared properties of the interaction vertices, inducing crucial modifications to their fundamental Ward identities. Within this general framework, we present a detailed derivation of the non-Abelian Ward identity obeyed by the pole-free part of the three-gluon vertex in the soft-gluon limit, and determine the smoking-gun displacement that the onset of the Schwinger mechanism p…
