The effects of collisional processes in the hot QCD medium to thermal dilepton production from $q\overline{q}$ annihilation in relativistic heavy-ion collisions have been investigated. The non-equilibrium corrections to the momentum distribution function have been estimated within the framework of ensemble-averaged diffusive Vlasov-Boltzmann equation, encoding the effects of collisional processes and turbulent chromo-fields in the medium. The contributions from the $2\rightarrow2$ elastic scattering processes have been quantified for the thermal dilepton production rate. It is seen that the collisional corrections enhance the equilibrium dilepton spectra at high $p_T$ and suppress at lower $p_T$. A comparative study between collisional and anomalous contributions to the dilepton production rates has also been explored. The collisional contributions are seen to be marginal over that due to collisionless anomalous transport.
We use the microscopic GiBUU transport model to calculate dilepton ($e^+e^-$) production in heavy-ion collisions at SIS18 energies focusing on the effect of collisional broadening of the $ρ$-meson. The collisional width of the $ρ$-meson at finite temperature and baryon density in nuclear matter is calculated on the basis of the collision integral of the GiBUU model. A systematic comparison with HADES data on dilepton production in heavy-ion collisions is performed. The collisional broadening of the $ρ$ improves the agreement between theory and experiment for the dilepton invariant-mass distrib…
We calculate leading-order dilepton yields from a quark-gluon plasma which has a time-dependent anisotropy in momentum space. Such anisotropies can arise during the earliest stages of quark-gluon plasma evolution due to the rapid longitudinal expansion of the created matter. Two phenomenological models for the proper time dependence of the parton hard momentum scale, p_hard, and the plasma anisotropy parameter, xi, are constructed which describe the transition of the plasma from its initial non-equilibrium state to an isotropic thermalized state. The first model constructed interpolates betwee…
Dilepton production in In+In collisions at 158 AGeV is studied within the microscopic parton-hadron-string dynamics (PHSD) transport approach that incorporates explicit partonic degrees-of-freedom, dynamical hadronization as well as the more familiar hadronic dynamics in the final reaction stages. A comparison to the data of the NA60 Collaboration shows that the measured dilepton yield is well described by including the collisional broadening of vector mesons, while simultaneously accounting for the electromagnetic radiation of the strongly coupled quark-gluon plasma (sQGP) via off-shell quark…
We present recent results on in-medium spectral functions of vector and axial-vector mesons, the electromagnetic (EM) spectral function and dilepton rates using the Functional Renormalization Group (FRG) approach. Our method is based on an analytic continuation procedure that allows us to calculate real-time quantities like spectral functions at finite temperature and chemical potential. As an effective low-energy model for Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) we use an extended linear-sigma model including quarks where (axial-)vector mesons as well as the photon are introduced as gauge bosons. In par…
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 …
We compute the collisional energy loss for a heavy quark above the critical temperature in Quantum ChromoDynamics (QCD). We work in the semi Quark-Gluon Plasma, which assumes that this region is dominated by the non-trivial holonomy of the thermal Wilson line. Relative to the result to leading order in perturbation theory, at a fixed value of the coupling constant we generically we find that collisional energy loss is suppressed by powers of the Polyakov loop, l < 1. For small values of the loop, this suppression is linear for the scattering off of light quarks, and quadratic for the scatterin…
The NA60 experiment has studied low-mass muon pair production in In-In collisions at 158 AGeV with unprecedented precision. Thus, there is hope that the in-medium modifications of the vector meson spectral function can be constrained more thoroughly than from previous experiments. Towards this goal, we present a study comparing different models for the in-medium modification of vector mesons. In particular, we investigate what can be learned about collisional broadening by a medium at finite temperature and baryon density and what model independent constraints can be obtained from the data. Of…
We discuss the latest theoretical results on direct photon and dilepton production from relativistic heavy-ion collisions. While the dilepton spectra at low invariant mass show in-medium effects like a collisional broadening of the vector meson spectral functions, the dilepton yield at high invariant masses (above 1.1 GeV) is dominated by QGP contributions for central heavy-ion collisions at relativistic energies. The present status of the photon $v_2$ "puzzle" - a large elliptic flow $v_2$ of the direct photons experimentally observed at RHIC and LHC energies - is also addressed. The role of …
The impact of momentum anisotropy on the heavy quark transport coefficients due to collisional and radiative processes in the QCD medium has been studied within the ambit of kinetic theory. Anisotropic aspects (momentum) are incorporated into the heavy quark dynamics through the non-equilibrium momentum distribution function of quarks, antiquarks, and gluons. These non-equilibrium distribution functions that encode the physics of momentum anisotropy and turbulent chromo-fields have been obtained by solving the ensemble-averaged diffusive Vlasov-Boltzmann equation. The momentum dependence of he…
The collisional energy gain of a heavy quark due to chromo-electromagnetic field fluctuations in a quark-gluon plasma is investigated. The field fluctuations lead to an energy gain of the quark for all temperatures and velocities. The net effect is a reduction of the collisional energy loss by 15-40% for parameters relevant at RHIC energies.
The dilepton emission in heavy-ion reactions at low beam energies is examined within a hadronic transport approach. In this article the production of electron-positron pairs from a new approach named SMASH (Simulating Many Accelerated Strongly-interacting Hadrons) is introduced. The dilepton emission is consistently taken into account below the hadronic threshold. The calculations are systematically confronted with HADES data in the kinetic energy range of $1 - 3.5A$ GeV for elementary, proton-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus reactions. The present approach employing a resonance treatment based on …
We consider the effect of the chromo-electromagnetic field fluctuations in addition to the collisional as well as the radiative energy loss suffered by heavy quarks while propagating through the hot and densed deconfined medium of quarks and gluons created in relativistic heavy ion collisions. The chromo-electromagnetic field fluctuations play an important role as it leads to an energy gain of heavy quarks of all momentum, significantly effective at the lower momentum region. With this, we have computed, for the first time, the nuclear modification factor (R_{AA}) of heavy mesons, viz., D-meso…
A number of top-spin observables are computed within the Standard Model (SM), at next-to-leading order in the strong and weak gauge couplings for hadronic top-quark anti-quark (ttbar) production and decay at the LHC for center-of-mass energies 7 and 8 TeV. For dileptonic final states we consider the azimuthal angle correlation, the helicity correlation, and the opening angle distribution; for lepton plus jets final states we determine distributions and asymmetries that trace a longitudinal and transverse polarization, respectively, of the t and t-bar samples. In addition, we investigate the ef…
The dilepton azimuthal correlation, namely the difference $ϕ$ between the azimuthal angles of the positive and negative charged lepton in the laboratory frame, provides a stringent test of the spin correlation in $t \bar t$ production at the Large Hadron Collider. We introduce a parameterisation of the differential cross section $dσ/ dϕ$ in terms of a Fourier series and show that the third-order expansion provides a sufficiently accurate approximation. This expansion can be considered as a `bridge' between theory and data, making it very simple to cast predictions in the Standard Model (SM) an…
We derive the expression for the collisional energy loss in two stream plasma induced by the fluctuating chromoelectric field. It is revealed that the main contribution here comes from the unstable modes which grow exponentially with time. A strong direction dependence of the energy loss has also been demonstrated.
The quark-gluon plasma, which is produced at an early stage of ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions, is expected to be initially strongly populated with chromodynamic fields. We address the question how heavy quarks interact with such a turbulent plasma in comparison with an equilibrated one of the same energy density. For this purpose we derive a Fokker-Planck transport equation of heavy quarks embedded in a plasma of light quarks and gluons. We first discuss the equilibrium plasma and then the turbulent one applying the same approach, where the heavy quarks interact not with the plasma con…
We propose a novel quasiparticle interpretation of the equation of state of deconfined QCD at finite temperature. Using appropriate thermal masses, we introduce a phenomenological parametrization of the onset of confinement in the vicinity of the phase transition. Lattice results of the energy density, the pressure and the interaction measure of pure SU(3) gauge theory are well reproduced. A relation between the thermal energy density of the Yang-Mills vacuum and the chromomagnetic condensate <B^2>_T is found. We also present the two flavour QCD equation of state for realistic quark masses and…
We study the important, yet widely overlooked, role of gluons for spin transport with a connection to local parity violation in quark gluon plasmas. We extend the newly developed quantum kinetic theory for relativistic fermions to the case coupled with non-Abelian chromo-electromagnetic fields and employ this formalism to investigate the spin polarization of quarks under dynamically generated color fields in near-equilibrium quark gluon plasmas. It is found that the spin polarization could be induced by parity-odd correlators of color fields, which may dominate over collisional effects at weak…
New vectorlike quarks have been proposed in many scenarios of new physics beyond the Standard Model, which address the hierarchy problem and may be potentially discovered at the Large Hadron Collider~(LHC). Based on a model-independent framework, we propose to search for the vectorlike $B$-quark~(VLQ-$B$) and focus on resonant production via $b$-gluon fusion through chromomagnetic interactions. We then explore the possible signals of the VLQ-$B$ through the $B\to tW$ decay mode at the 14 TeV LHC. After a rapid simulation of signal and background events, the $2σ$ excluded regions and the $5σ$ d…
In this proceedings contribution I review recent work in kinetic theory which demonstrates that, for system undergoing Bjorken expansion, there exists an attractor in all moments of the one-particle distribution function. I discuss how this attractor emerges in both exact solutions obtained in relaxation time approximation (RTA) and the effective kinetic theory approach to high-temperature quantum chromodynamics (QCD). The QCD effective kinetic theory collisional kernel used includes both elastic (2 <-> 2) and LPM-resummed inelastic (2 <-> 1) contributions. The results obtained indicate that a…
In this work we have studied the collisional energy loss of a heavy quark propagating through a high temperature QCD plasma consisting of both heavy and light quarks to leading logarithmic order in the Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) coupling constant. The formalism adopted in this work shows a significant enhancement for the charm quark energy loss when the bath particles are also considered to be heavy in addition to light quarks. We know the running coupling constant is dependent on the momentum of the particles and the temperature of the system. Therefore, we have presented a comparison of th…
Probing the CP violation effects via the angular coefficients in Drell-Yan production
Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences(中国科学院高能物理研究所);School of Physical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences(中国科学院大学物理科学学院);Center for High Energy Physics, Peking University(北京大学高能物理中心)
The presence of thermal gluons reduces the stimulated gluon emission off a heavy quark propagating in the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) while absorption causes reduction of the radiative energy loss. On the other hand, the chromo-electromagnetic field fluctuations present in the QGP lead to collisional energy gain of the heavy quark. The net effect of the thermal gluon absorption and field fluctuations is a reduction of the total energy loss of the heavy quark, prominent at the lower momenta. We consider both kind of the energy gains along with the usual losses, and compute the nuclear modification…
Non-perturbative charm and bottom quark-pair production is investigated in the early stage of heavy ion collisions. Following our earlier works, the time-dependent study is based on a kinetic description of fermion-pair production in strong non-Abelian fields. We introduce time-dependent chromo-electric external field with a pulse-like time evolution, which simulates the overlap of two colliding heavy ions. The calculations is performed in a SU(2) color model with finite current quark masses. Yields of heavy quark-pairs are compared to the ones of light and strange quark-pairs. We show that th…
We calculate the yields of quarkonia in heavy ion collisions at RHIC and the LHC as a function of their transverse momentum. Based upon non-relativistic quantum chromodynamics, our results include both color-singlet and color-octet contributions and feed-down effects from excited states. In reactions with ultra-relativistic nuclei, we focus on the consistent implementation of dynamically calculated nuclear matter effects, such as coherent power corrections, cold nuclear matter energy loss, and the Cronin effect in the initial state. In the final state, we consider radiative energy loss for the…
This work studies collinearly factorizable nuclear parton distribution functions (nPDFs) in perturbative Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) at next-to-leading order in the light of hadron-nucleus collision data which have not been included in nPDF analyses previously. The aim is at setting new constraints on the nuclear modifications of the gluon distribution and on the flavour separation of quark nuclear modifications. The introductory part provides an outline of the theoretical framework of QCD collinear factorization and the used statistical methods and relates the work presented here to other si…
Experiments on high-energy heavy-ion collisions reveal the formation and some intriguing properties of the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP), a new phase of matter predicted by Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), the quantum field theory of strong interactions. The phenomenological success of relativistic hydrodynamic simulations with remarkably weak shear viscosity, modeling QGP as an almost perfect fluid, are in favor of the occurrence of a strongly-coupled QGP expanding and cooling during the reaction. A derivation of these features in QCD at strong coupling is still lacking and represents a very intricat…