7 pages, 3 figures; v2: minor corrections, published version, plot scripts and data shown in figures are available at https://doi.org/10.4119/unibi/2939684 v3: included supplemental material
We exploit the concept of hydrodynamic attractors to establish a general relation between the initial state energy and the produced particle multiplicities in high-energy nuclear collisions. When combined with an ab initio model of energy deposition, the entropy production during the pre-equilibrium phase naturally explains the universal centrality dependence of the measured charged particle yields in nucleus-nucleus collisions. We further estimate the energy density of the far-from-equilibrium initial state and discuss how our results can be used to constrain non-equilibrium properties of the quark-gluon plasma.
We provide a generalized formulation of fluctuating hydrodynamics for the far-from-equilibrium noisy medium. As an example, we consider a noisy plasma experiencing Bjorken expansion, for which the leading order evolution is captured by hydrodynamic attractor of classical hydrodynamics, while the quadratic couplings of fluctuations are solved effectively via a generalized version of the hydrodynamic kinetic equation. In the far-from-equilibrium plasma, backreaction of hydrodynamic fluctuations results in renormalization of transport properties, as well as long time tails, of high orders. In par…
We derive the general analytical solution of the viscous hydrodynamic equations for an ultrarelativistic gas of hard spheres undergoing Bjorken expansion, taking into account effects from particle number conservation, and use it to analytically determine its attractor at late times. Differently than all the cases considered before involving rapidly expanding fluids, in this example the gradient expansion converges. We exactly determine the hydrodynamic attractor of this system when its microscopic dynamics is modeled by the Boltzmann equation with a fully nonlinear collision kernel. The exact …
Non-conformal attractor behavior is studied by solving non-conformal second order viscous hydrodynamics with respect to boost-invariant plasmas. Numerical solutions of the relative decay rate of the enthalpy density, the inverse shear and bulk Reynolds numbers, all exhibit universal patterns towards an ideal fluid description at late stages, demonstrating the existence of non-conformal hydrodynamic attractor. However, as a generic feature, the non-conformal hydrodynamic attractor emerges only at late times, which differs drastically from the behavior observed in conformal systems. The absence …
The quark-gluon plasma created in heavy-ion collisions is not in local thermal equilibrium at early times. Despite this, dissipative hydrodynamics describes the evolution of the energy-momentum tensor quite well after only roughly 0.5 - 1 fm/c. This can be understood using the concept of a non-equilibrium dynamical attractor. The attractor is a uniquely identifiable solution to the dynamical equations to which all solutions are drawn as the system evolves. Once solutions collapse onto the non-equilibrium attractor they are ``pseudo-thermalized'' in the sense that they have lost information abo…
A review of the recent progress of relativistic hydrodynamic attractors is presented, with a focus on applications in heavy ion collisions and the quark gluon plasma. Pedagogical introductions to the effective descriptions relevant for attractors in high energy physics, namely hydrodynamics, holography and kinetic theory, are followed by highlights of some recent advances.
We analytically investigate hydrodynamic attractor solutions in both Müller-Israel-Stewart (MIS) and kinetic theories in a viscous fluid system undergoing a Hubble expansion with a fixed expansion rate. We show that the gradient expansion for the MIS theory and the Chapman-Enskog expansion for the Boltzmann equation within the relaxation time approximation are factorially divergent and obtain hydrodynamic attractor solutions by applying the Borel resummation technique to those asymptotic divergent series. In both theories, we find that the hydrodynamic attractor solutions are globally attracti…
We use principal component analysis to study the hydrodynamic attractor in Yang-Mills kinetic theory undergoing the Bjorken expansion with Color Glass Condensate initial conditions. The late time hydrodynamic attractor is characterized by a single principal component determining the overall energy scale. How it is reached is governed by the disappearance of single subleading principal component characterizing deviations of the pressure anisotropy, the screening mass and the scattering rate. We find that for wide range of couplings the approach to the hydrodynamic attractor at late times is wel…
There is mounting evidence suggesting that relativistic hydrodynamics becomes relevant for the physics of quark-gluon plasma as the result of nonhydrodynamic modes decaying to an attractor apparent even when the system is far from local equilibrium. Here we determine this attractor for Bjorken flow in N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory using Borel summation of the gradient expansion of the expectation value of the energy momentum tensor. By comparing the result to numerical simulations of the flow based on the AdS/CFT correspondence we show that it provides an accurate and unambiguous approx…
We find the general analytical solution of the viscous relativistic hydrodynamic equations (in the absence of bulk viscosity and chemical potential) for a Bjorken expanding fluid with a constant shear viscosity relaxation time. We analytically determine the hydrodynamic attractor of this fluid and discuss its properties. We show for the first time that the slow-roll expansion, a commonly used approach to characterize the attractor, diverges. This is shown to hold also in a conformal plasma. The gradient expansion is found to converge in an example where causality and stability are violated.
We determine the dynamical attractors associated with anisotropic hydrodynamics (aHydro) and the DNMR equations for a 0+1d conformal system using kinetic theory in the relaxation time approximation. We compare our results to the non-equilibrium attractor obtained from exact solution of the 0+1d conformal Boltzmann equation, Navier-Stokes theory, and second-order Mueller-Israel-Stewart theory. We demonstrate that the aHydro attractor equation resums an infinite number of terms in the inverse Reynolds number. The resulting resummed aHydro attractor possesses a positive longitudinal to transverse…
Study of thermal particle production is crucial to understand the space-time evolution of the fireball produced in high energy heavy-ion collisions. We consider thermal particle production within the framework of relativistic viscous hydrodynamics and employ recently obtained analytical solutions of higher-order viscous hydrodynamics with longitudinal Bjorken expansion to calculate the spectra of dileptons and photons. Using these analytical solutions, we constrain the allowed initial states by demanding positivity and reality of energy density throughout the evolution. Further, we compute the…
We study the far-off-equilibrium dynamics of a Bjorken expanding non-conformal system within kinetic theory and hydrodynamics. We show that, in contrast to the conformal case, neither shear nor bulk viscous pressure relax quickly to a non-equilibrium attractor. In kinetic theory an early-time, far-from-equilibrium attractor exists for the scaled longitudinal pressure, driven by the rapid longitudinal expansion of the medium. Second-order dissipative hydrodynamics fails to accurately describe this attractor, but a modified anisotropic hydrodynamic formulation reproduces it and provides excellen…
Projective Origin of the Spin Hydrodynamic Attractor and Its Resurgent Repellor
South China Normal University（华南师范大学）；State Key Laboratory of Nuclear Physics and Technology, Institute of Quantum Matter, South China Normal University（华南师范大学量子物质研究院核物理与技术国家重点实验室）；Guangdong Basic Research Center of Excellence for Structure and Fundamental Interactions of Matter, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Nuclear Science（广东省物质结构与基本相互作用卓越研究中心、广东省核科学重点实验室）
We present an analytic solution of a simple set of equations that govern the expansion of boost-invariant plasmas of massless particles. These equations describe, approximately, the early time, collisionless regime, and the transition to hydrodynamics at late time. Their mathematical structure encompasses all versions of second order hydrodynamics when applied to Bjorken flows. The analytic solution provides an explicit expression for the attractor solution that connects the collisionless regime to hydrodynamics. It also constitutes a neat example of an application of the theory of resurgence …
The nonequilibrium evolution in a boost-invariant Bjorken flow of a hybrid viscous fluid model containing two interacting components with different viscosities, such that they represent strongly and weakly self-coupled sectors, is shown to be characterized by a hydrodynamic attractor which has an early-time behavior that is reminiscent of the so-called bottom-up thermalization scenario in heavy-ion collisions. The hydrodynamization times for the two sectors can differ strongly, with details depending on the curve realized on the two-dimensional attractor surface, which might account for differ…
Hydrodynamic attractors have recently gained prominence in the context of early stages of ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions at the RHIC and LHC. We critically examine the existing ideas on this subject from a phase space point of view. In this picture the hydrodynamic attractor can be seen as a special case of the more general phenomenon of dynamical dimensionality reduction of phase space regions. We quantify this using Principal Component Analysis. Furthermore, we adapt the well known slow-roll approximation to this setting. These techniques generalize easily to higher dimensional phas…
Using and comparing kinetic theory and second-order Chapman-Enskog hydrodynamics, we study the non-conformal dynamics of a system undergoing Bjorken expansion. We use the concept of `free-streaming fixed lines' for scaled shear and bulk stresses in non-conformal kinetic theory and hydrodynamics, and show that these `fixed lines' behave as early-time attractors and repellors of the evolution. In the conformal limit, the free-streaming fixed lines reduce to the well-known fixed points of conformal Bjorken dynamics. A new fixed point in the free streaming regime is identified which lies at the in…
Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Heidelberg（海德堡大学理论物理研究所）；Department of Physics and Astronomy, Ghent University（根特大学物理与天文学系）；Institute of Theoretical Physics and Mark Kac Center for Complex Systems Research, Jagiellonian University（雅盖隆大学理论物理研究所与马克·卡克复杂系统研究中心）
Perturbative expansions, such as the well-known gradient series and the recently proposed slow-roll expansion, have been recently used to investigate the emergence of hydrodynamic behavior in systems undergoing Bjorken flow. In this paper we determine for the first time the large order behavior of these perturbative expansions in relativistic hydrodynamics in the case of Gubser flow. While both series diverge, the slow-roll series can provide a much better overall description of the system's dynamics than the gradient expansion when both series are truncated at low orders. The truncated slow-r…
I review recent progress in thermalization in heavy-ion collisions, with particular emphasis on hydrodynamic attractor, and also report recent progress in hydrodynamic fluctuations.
Extending the quantum effective approach of Son and Nicolis and incorporating dissipation, we develop a MIS formalism for describing a superfluid out of equilibrium by including the Goldstone boson and the condensate together with the hydrodynamic modes as the effective degrees of freedom. We find that the evolution of the superfluid undergoing Bjorken flow is governed by the conventional hydrodynamic attractor with unbroken symmetry and an even number of novel non-dissipative fixed points with broken symmetry. If the initial temperature is super-critical, then the condensate becomes exponenti…
We study the convergence of the hydrodynamic series in the gravity dual of Gauss-Bonnet gravity in five dimensions with negative cosmological constant via holography. By imposing boost invariance symmetry, we find a solution to the Gauss-Bonnet equation of motion in inverse powers of the proper time, from which we can extract high order corrections to Bjorken flow for different values of the Gauss-Bonnet parameter $λ_{GB}$. As in all other known examples the gradient expansion is, at most, an asymptotic series which can be understood through applying the techniques of Borel-Padé summation. As …
We consider a plasma of massless particles undergoing Bjorken expansion, mimicking the matter created in ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions. We study the transition to hydrodynamics using kinetic theory in the relaxation time approximation. By allowing the relaxation time to depend on time, we can monitor the speed of the transition from the collisionless regime to hydrodynamics. By using a special set of moments of the momentum distribution, we reduce the kinetic equation to a coupled mode problem which encompasses all versions of second order viscous hydrodynamics for Bjorken flows. Thi…
Numerical simulations of expanding plasma based on the AdS/CFT correspondence as well as kinetic theory and hydrodynamic models strongly suggest that some observables exhibit universal behaviour even when the system is not close to local equilibrium. This leading behaviour is expected to be corrected by transient, exponentially decaying contributions which carry information about the initial state. Focusing on late times, when the system is already in the hydrodynamic regime, we analyse numerical solutions describing expanding plasma of strongly coupled N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory and…
We review direct photons in the phenomenology of nuclear collisions at relativistic energies. Direct photons carry information about the space-time evolution of nuclear collisions because the QCD medium is transparent against colorless particles. After a status summary of theoretical and experimental studies, transverse momentum spectra and azimuthal momentum anisotropies of direct photons are studied in the context of the hydrodynamic modeling of relativistic nuclear collisions with emphasis on pre-equilibrium photons. It is implied that pre-equilibrium photons can be as important as thermal …
Attractors and Late Time Asymptotics in a Generalized Relativistic Second Order Spin Hydrodynamics
South China Normal University（华南师范大学）；State Key Laboratory of Nuclear Physics and Technology, Institute of Quantum Matter（核物理与技术国家重点实验室量子物质研究所）；Guangdong Basic Research Center of Excellence for Structure and Fundamental Interactions of Matter, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Nuclear Science（广东省物质结构与基本相互作用卓越基础研究中心广东省核科学重点实验室）；Henan Academy of Sciences（河南省科学院）；Institute of Physics, Henan Academy of Sciences（河南省科学院物理研究所）；Central China Normal University（华中师范大学）；Key Laboratory of Quark & Lepton Physics (MOE) and Institute of Particle Physics（夸克与轻子物理教育部重点实验室粒子物理研究所）
We study the dissipative evolution of (0+1)-dimensionally expanding media with Bjorken symmetry using the Boltzmann equation for massive particles in relaxation-time approximation. Breaking conformal symmetry by a mass induces a non-zero bulk viscous pressure in the medium. It is shown that even a small mass (in units of the local temperature) drastically modifies the well-known attractor for the shear Reynolds number previously observed in massless systems. For generic nonzero particle mass, neither the shear nor the bulk viscous pressure relax quickly to a non-equilibrium attractor; they app…
Hydrodynamic simulations are used to make predictions for the integrated elliptic flow coefficient v_2 in sqrt(s)=5.5 TeV lead-lead and sqrt(s)=14 TeV proton-proton collisions at the LHC. We predict a 10% increase in v_2 from RHIC to Pb+Pb at LHC, and v_2 ~ 0 in p+p collisions unless eta/s < 0.08.
Relativistic dissipative hydrodynamic model at finite density is a promising tool for analyzing the dense QCD matter created in the beam energy scan experiments. The hydrodynamic frame can be chosen in the direction of energy flow, which is called the Landau frame, or conserved charge flow, which is called the Eckart frame. In this study, I investigate the stability and causality of full second-order relativistic hydrodynamic equations in the two frames. Then the effects of frame choice on hydrodynamic variables and experimental observables are estimated numerically and are found to be visible…
Consistent formulations of relativistic viscous hydrodynamics involve short lived modes, leading to asymptotic rather than convergent gradient expansions. In this Letter we consider the Mueller-Israel-Stewart theory applied to a longitudinally expanding quark-gluon plasma system and identify hydrodynamics as a universal attractor without invoking the gradient expansion. We give strong evidence for the existence of this attractor and then show that it can be recovered from the divergent gradient expansion by Borel summation. This requires careful accounting for the short-lived modes which leads…
We present a concise review of the recent development of relativistic hydrodynamics and its applications to heavy-ion collisions. Theoretical progress on the extended formulation of hydrodynamics towards out-of-equilibrium systems is addressed, emphasizing the so-called attractor solution. On the other hand, recent phenomenological improvements in the hydrodynamic modeling of heavy-ion collisions with respect to the ongoing Beam Energy Scan program, the quantitative characterization of transport coefficients in the three-dimensionally expanding quark-gluon plasma, the fluid description of smal…
We compute v4/(v2)^2 in ideal and viscous hydrodynamics. We investigate its sensitivity to details of the hydrodynamic model and compare the results to experimental data from RHIC. Whereas v2 has a significant sensitivity only to initial eccentricity and viscosity while being insensitive to freeze out temperature, we find that v4/(v2)^2 is quite insensitive to initial eccentricity. On the other hand, it can still be sensitive to shear viscosity in addition to freeze out temperature, although viscous effects do not universally increase v4/(v2)^2 as originally predicted. Consistent with data, we…
We extend previous studies of the conformal 0+1d kinetic non-equilibrium attractor in relaxation time approximation by enforcing number conservation through the introduction of a dynamical fugacity (chemical potential). We derive two coupled integral equations for the effective temperature and fugacity which are then solved numerically to obtain the exact solution. The resulting solutions exhibit convergence to a unique non-equilibrium attractor when the scaled moments of the distribution function are plotted as a function of the rescaled time w = tau/tau_eq. This occurs even though the system…
We compute the longitudinal hydrodynamic flow in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 5500 GeV by using boost non-invariant initial conditions following from perturbative QCD. The transfer of entropy and energy from the central region to larger rapidities caused by boost non-invariance is determined and the associated decrease in the lifetime of the system is estimated.
The quark matter created in relativistic nuclear collisions is interpreted as a nearly-perfect fluid. The recent efforts to explore its finite-density properties in the beam energy scan programs motivate one to revisit the issue of the local rest frame fixing in off-equilibrium hydrodynamics. I first investigate full second-order relativistic hydrodynamics in the Landau and the Eckart frames. Then numerical hydrodynamic simulations are performed to elucidate the effect of frame choice on flow observables in relativistic nuclear collisions. The results indicate that the flow can differ in the L…
We investigate the compression of nuclear matter in relativistic hydrodynamics. Nuclear matter is described by a $σ-ω$--type model for the hadron matter phase and by the MIT bag model for the quark--gluon plasma, with a first order phase transition between both phases. In the presence of phase transitions, hydrodynamical solutions change qualitatively, for instance, one-dimensional stationary compression is no longer accomplished by a single shock but via a sequence of shock and compressional simple waves. We construct the analytical solution to the ``slab-on-slab'' collision problem over a ra…
Experimental results on azimuthal correlations in high energy nuclear collisions (nucleus-nucleus, proton-nucleus and proton-proton) seem to be well described by viscous hydrodynamics. It is often argued that this agreement implies either local thermal equilibrium or at least local isotropy. In this note, I present arguments why this is not the case. Neither local near-equilibrium nor near-isotropy are required in order for hydrodynamics to offer a successful and accurate description of experimental results. However, I predict the breakdown of hydrodynamics at momenta of order seven times the …
We establish the existence of a far-from-equilibrium attractor in weakly-coupled gauge theory undergoing one-dimensional Bjorken expansion. We demonstrate that the resulting far-from-equilibrium evolution is insensitive to certain features of the initial condition, including both the initial momentum-space anisotropy and initial occupancy. We find that this insensitivity extends beyond the energy-momentum tensor to the detailed form of the one-particle distribution function. Based on our results, we assess different procedures for reconstructing the full one-particle distribution function from…
We propose that flow fluctuations have the same origin as transverse momentum fluctuations. The common source of these fluctuations is the spatially inhomogeneous initial state that drives hydrodynamic flow. Longitudinal correlations from an early Glasma stage followed by hydrodynamic flow quantitatively account for many features of multiplicity and $p_t$ fluctuation data. We develop a framework for studying flow and its fluctuations in this picture. We then compute elliptic and triangular flow fluctuations, and study their connections to the ridge.
