We propose a novel method to construct the Landau thermodynamic potential directly from the fluctuations measured in heavy-ion collisions. The potential is capable of revealing the signal of the critical end-point (CEP) and the first order phase transition (FOPT) of QCD in the system even away from the phase transition region. With the available experimental data, we show that the criterion of the FOPT is negative for most of the collision energies which indicates no signal of FOPT. The data at $\sqrt{s_\mathrm{NN}}=7.7$ GeV with 0-5% centrality shows a different behavior and the mean value of the data satisfies the criterion. However, the uncertainty is still too large to make a certain conclusion. The higher order fluctuations are also required for confirming the signal. We emphasize therefore that new measurements with higher precision for the $C_{1,...,6}$ within 0-5% centrality in the vicinity of $\sqrt{s_\mathrm{NN}}=7.7$ GeV are in demand which may finally reveal the signal of QCD phase transition.
Baryon number cumulants are invaluable tools to diagnose the primordial stage of heavy ion collisions if they can be measured. In experiments, however, proton number cumulants have been measured as substitutes. In fact, proton number fluctuations are further modified in the hadron phase and different from those of baryon number. We show that the isospin distribution of nucleons at kinetic freezeout is binomial and factorized. This leads to formulas that express the baryon number cumulants sorely in terms of proron number fluctuations, which are experimentally observable.
This short paper is an attempt to describe a theorist's view of the goals of relativistic heavy ion program which has just entered the collider era. These goals are centered around understanding the properties and the critical behavior of Quantum Chromo-Dynamics (QCD) in the non-linear regime of high color field strength and high parton density. Some of the current theoretical challenges are highlighted, and the place of heavy ion research in the broader context of modern particle and nuclear physics is discussed.
In this talk, I demonstrate that the proposed Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) will be an ideal and unique future facility to address many overarching questions about QCD and strong interaction physics at one place. The EIC will be the world's first polarized electron-proton (and light ion), as well as the first electron-nucleus collider at flexible collision energies. With its high luminosity and beam polarization, the EIC distinguishes itself from HERA and the other fixed target electron-hadron facilities around the world. The EIC is capable of taking us to the next QCD frontier to explore the gl…
A systematic search for a critical point in the phase diagram of QCD matter is underway at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and is planned at several future facilities. Its existence, if confirmed, and its location will greatly enhance our understanding of QCD. In this note we emphasize several important issues that are often not fully recognized in theoretical interpretations of experimental results relevant to the critical point search. We discuss ways in which our understanding on these issues can be improved.
The space-time evolution of high energy non-central heavy ion collisions is studied with relativistic hydrodynamics. The results are very sensitive to the Equation of State(EoS). For an EoS with the QCD phase transition, an unusual matter distribution develops. Before freeze-out, two shells are formed which then physically separate and leave a maximum in the center. We make specific predictions for the azimuthal dependence of the flow and for two-pion interferometry, contrasting our results with a resonance gas EoS.
In this paper we discuss the fluidity of the hot and dense QCD matter created in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions in comparison with various other fluids, and in particular suggest its possible supercriticality. After examining the proper way to compare non-relativistic and relativistic fluids from both thermodynamic and hydrodynamic perspectives, we propose a new fluidity measure which shows certain universality for a remarkable diversity of critical fluids. We then demonstrate that a fluid in its supercritical regime has its fluidity considerably enhanced. This may suggest a possible r…
Modifications of jets in the existence of a hot and dense QCD medium have recently attracted a lot of attentions. In this talk, we demonstrate how jet-medium interactions change the behavior of jets by offering examples of inclusive jet and dijet productions at $ {\cal O}(α_s^3)$ in heavy ion collisions including initial-state cold nuclear effects and especially the final-state parton energy loss effect. The suppression of inclusive jet spectrum varying with jet radii and a flatter dijet momentum imbalance as compared to those in hadron-hadron collisions are observed in high-energy nuclear col…
We briefly discuss the status of the signatures of the QCD critical endpoint in heavy-ion collisions concentrating on the role played by the finiteness of the medium created in such experiments.
Dense QCD matter can exhibit spatially modulated regimes. They can be characterized by particles with a moat spectrum, where the minimum of the energy is over a sphere at nonzero momentum. Such a moat regime can either be a precursor for the formation inhomogeneous condensates, or signal a quantum pion liquid. We introduce the quantum pion liquid and discuss the underlying physics of the moat regime based on studies in low-energy models and preliminary results in QCD. Heavy-ion collisions at small beam energies have the potential to reveal the rich phase structure of QCD at low temperature and…
In these two lectures I review the basics of heavy-ion collisions at relativistic energies and the physics we can do with them. I aim to cover the basics on the kinematics and observables in heavy-ion collider experiments, the basics on the phenomenology of the nuclear matter phase diagram, some of the model building and simulations currently used in the heavy-ion physics community and a selected list of amazing phenomenological discoveries and predictions.
The idea that the nuclear matter may posses long range topological order is supported by the theory and the lattice calculations. At high temperature this order is instrumental in producing anomalous phenomena such as the Chiral Magnetic Effect. In the cold nuclear matter it affects the gluon distribution in the nuclear wave function at low $x$. The effect of the topological order is encapsulated in the unintegrated gluon distribution functions which are proportional, at the leading order, to the square of the gluon propagator at finite topological charge density. It is argued that the Electro…
We consider the experimental implications of the axial current triangle diagram anomaly in a hydrodynamic description of high density QCD. We propose a signal of an enhanced production of spin-excited hadrons in the direction of the rotation axis in off-central heavy ion collisions.
We review a recently proposed phenomenological framework to establish the notions of QCD factorization and universality of jet cross sections in the heavy-ion environment. First results of a global analysis of the nuclear modification factor of inclusive jets are presented where we extract medium modified jet functions using a Monte Carlo sampling approach. We observe that gluon jets are significantly more suppressed than quark jets. In addition, we study the jet radius dependence of the inclusive jet cross section in heavy-ion collisions and comment on a recent measurement from CMS. By consid…
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.
Nonextensive statistics has attracted attention as a description of particle spectra in nuclear collisions at QCD energies. First, we construct the equation of state by incorporating Tsallis statistics based on the hadron resonance gas and parton gas models. Thermodynamic conditions are found to impose constraints on the $q$-parameter of Tsallis distribution. Next, we apply the equation of state to the relativistic hydrodynamic modeling of nuclear collisions. The Cooper-Frye prescription is consistently modified. Numerical demonstrations indicate that the model may describe charged particle sp…
Using our developed new relativistic viscous hydrodynamics code, we investigate the temperature dependence of shear and bulk viscosities from comparison with the ALICE data: single particle spectra and collective flows of Pb+Pb $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}=2.76$ TeV collisions at the Large Hadron Collider. We find that from the comprehensive analyses of centrality dependence of single particle spectra and collective flows we can extract detailed information on the quark-gluon plasma bulk property, without the information being smeared by the final state interactions.
Relativistic collisions of light on heavy ions (p+Au at sqrt(s)=7.7 GeV, p+Au, d+Au,3He+Au at sqrt(s)=62.4 GeV and 200 GeV and p+Pb, 3He+Pb at sqrt(s)=5.02 TeV) are simulated using "superSONIC", a model that includes pre-equilibrium flow, viscous hydrodynamics and a hadronic cascade afterburner. Even though these systems have strong gradients and only consist of at most a few tens of charged particles per unit rapidity, one finds evidence that a hydrodynamic description applies to these systems. Based on these simulations, the presence of a triangular flow component in d+Au collisions at sqrt(…
Impact of QCD Energy Evolution on Observables in Heavy-Ion Collisions
University of Jyväskylä（于韦斯屈莱大学）；Helsinki Institute of Physics（赫尔辛基物理研究所）；Brookhaven National Laboratory（布鲁克海文国家实验室）；Wayne State University（韦恩州立大学）；Central China Normal University（华中师范大学）
Recently the HAL QCD Collaboration reported the $Ω-Ω$ and $N-Ω$ interaction potentials by the lattice QCD simulations. Based on these results, $NΩ$ ($^5S_2$) and $ΩΩ$ ($^1S_0$) bound states were predicted with the binding energy about a few MeV. In addition, $N-Ω$ HBT correlation function was also measured by the STAR Collaboration as well as the ALICE Collaboration. These results provide dynamical information whether or not $Ω$-dibaryons exist in the interaction aspects. Another necessary point for the detection of $Ω$-dibaryons is the experimental environment where the bound state could be p…
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\…
We introduce an event-by-event perturbative-QCD + saturation + hydro ("EKRT") framework for ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions, where we compute the produced fluctuating QCD-matter energy densities from next-to-leading order perturbative QCD using a saturation conjecture to control soft particle production, and describe the space-time evolution of the QCD matter with dissipative fluid dynamics, event by event. We perform a simultaneous comparison of the centrality dependence of hadronic multiplicities, transverse momentum spectra, and flow coefficients of the azimuth-angle asymmetries, aga…
We utilize an event-by-event relativistic hydrodynamic calculation performed at a number of different incident beam energies to investigate the creation of hot and dense QCD matter near the critical point. Using state-of-the-art analysis and visualization tools we demonstrate that each collision event probes QCD matter characterized by a wide range of temperatures and baryo-chemical potentials, making a dynamical response of the system to the vicinity of the critical point very difficult to isolate above the background.
Strong magnetic fields are commonly generated in off-central relativistic heavy-ion collisions in the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Lab and in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN and have been used to probe the topological configurations of the QCD vacua. A strong magnetic field can affect the character and location of the QCD critical point, influence the QCD phases, and lead to anomalous transport of charge. To take advantage of the magnetic field as a probe of QCD at higher baryon densities, we are going to need experiments capable to scan the lower energy regi…
For a complete understanding of the QCD phase diagram it is important to connect first-principle thermodynamic calculations to experimental data from the RHIC Beam Energy Scan and the future experimental facilities FAIR, GSI, and NICA, Dubna. This can only be achieved by a realistic modeling of the dynamical evolution of critical fluctuations in heavy-ion collisions at the QCD phase transition. In this note I will summarize the current status of these dynamical models and highlight some of the important issues, which need to be addressed in the future.
We investigate the consequences of a nonzero bulk viscosity coefficient on the transverse momentum spectra, azimuthal momentum anisotropy, and multiplicity of charged hadrons produced in heavy ion collisions at LHC energies. The agreement between a realistic 3D hybrid simulation and the experimentally measured data considerably improves with the addition of a bulk viscosity coefficient for strongly interacting matter. This paves the way for an eventual quantitative determination of several QCD transport coefficients from the experimental heavy ion and hadron-nucleus collision programs.
How the bulk of the Universe's visible mass emerges and how it is manifest in the existence and properties of hadrons are profound questions that probe into the heart of strongly interacting matter. Paradoxically, the lightest pseudoscalar mesons appear to be the key to the further understanding of the emergent mass and structure mechanisms. These mesons, namely the pion and kaon, are the Nambu-Goldstone boson modes of QCD. Unravelling their partonic structure and the interplay between emergent and Higgs-boson mass mechanisms is a common goal of three interdependent approaches -- continuum QCD…
The heavy quark production in ultraperipheral heavy ion collisions is investigated, in particular we focus on the results from the coherent interactions given by the two-photon process. One addresses the heavy quark total cross sections at photon level considering the saturation model and the BFKL dynamics in the color dipole picture. The corresponding cross sections at nuclear level are presented. It is verified that the QCD dynamics implies an enhancement of the cross section in comparison with previous calculations.
We calculate the photonuclear production of heavy quarks in ultraperipheral heavy ion collisions. The integrated cross section and the rapidity distribution are computed employing sound high energy QCD formalisms as the collinear and semihard approaches as well as the saturation model. In particular, the color glass condensate (CGC) formalism is also considered using a simple phenomenological parameterization for the color field correlator in the medium, which allow us to obtain more reliable estimates for charm and bottom production at LHC energies.
I provide a brief summary of the theory presentations at ISMD 2011 related to the phenomenology of small-x QCD evolution and its application to particle production and fluctuations in high-energy hadron and heavy-ion collisions. I also mention some challenges for quantitative phenomenology which emerged from the LHC, such as understanding the long-range "ridge" in high-multiplicity p+p collisions, the transverse momentum distributions in p+p at semi-hard pT, and the origin and scale of density fluctuations in the initial state of heavy-ion collisions.
In a previous paper, we have shown that a double phi peak structure appears in the dilepton invariant mass spectrum if a first order QCD phase transition occurs in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions. Furthermore, the transition temperature can be determined from the transverse momentum distribution of the low mass phi peak. In this work, we extend the study to the case that a smooth crossover occurs in the quark-gluon plasma to the hadronic matter transition. We find that the double phi peak structure still exists in the dilepton spectrum and thus remains a viable signal for the formation …
We report here on a recent lattice study of the QCD transition region at finite temperature and zero chemical potential using domain wall fermions (DWF). We also present a parameterization of the QCD equation of state obtained from lattice QCD that is suitable for use in hydrodynamics studies of heavy ion collisions. Finally, we show preliminary results from a multi-stage hydrodynamics/hadron cascade model of a heavy ion collision, in an attempt to understand how well the experimental data (e.g. particle spectra, elliptic flow, and HBT radii) can constrain the inputs (e.g. initial temperature,…
We argue that by measuring higher moments of the net proton number fluctuations in heavy ion collisions (HIC) one can probe the QCD chiral cross over transition experimentally. We discuss the properties of fluctuations of the net baryon number in the vicinity of the chiral crossover transition within the Polyakov loop extended quark-meson model at finite temperature and baryon density. The calculation includes non-perturbative dynamics implemented within the functional renormalization group approach. We find a clear signal for the chiral crossover transition in the fluctuations of the net bary…
In recent years, there has been a significant effort to extract the temperature-dependent shear ($η/s$) and bulk ($ζ/s$) viscosity over entropy ratios of the quark-gluon plasma from a global comparison of heavy-ion data with results of hydrodynamic simulations. However, anisotropic flow, which is arguably the most sensitive probe of viscosity, is only sensitive to an {\it effective\/} viscosity over entropy ratio, which is obtained by taking a weighted average over the temperature, and summing the contributions of shear and bulk. We estimate this effective viscosity using existing first-princi…
These introductory lectures present a broad overview of the physics of high parton densities in QCD and its application to our understanding of the early time dynamics in heavy ion collisions.
Fluctuations of conserved quantities, such as baryon, electric charge and strangeness number, are sensitive observables in relativistic heavy-ion collisions to probe the QCD phase transition and search for the QCD critical point. In this paper, we review the experimental measurements of the cumulants (up to fourth order) of event-by-event net-proton (proxy for net-baryon), net-charge and net-kaon (proxy for net-strangeness) multiplicity distributions in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=7.7, 11.5, 14.5, 19.6, 27, 39, 62.4, 200$ GeV from the first phase of beam energy scan program at the Relat…
Diffractive dijet production at the electron-ion collider (EIC) has been proposed to study the gluon Wigner distribution at small-$x$. We investigate the soft gluon radiation associated with the final state jets and an all order resummation formula is derived. We show that the soft gluon resummation plays an important role to describe E791 data on $π$-induced diffractive dijet production at Fermilab. Predictions for the EIC are presented, and we emphasize that the soft gluon resummation is an important aspect to explore the nucleon/nucleus tomography through these processes.
We argue that the collinear factorization of the fragmentation functions in high energy nuclear collisions breaks down at transverse momenta $p_T \lesssim Q_s/g$ due to high parton densities in the colliding hadrons and/or nuclei. We find that gluon recombination dominates in that $p_T$ region. We calculate the inclusive cross-section for $π$ meson and nucleon production using the low energy theorems for the scale anomaly in QCD, and compare our quantitative baryon-to-meson ratio to the RHIC data.
The search for the critical point of QCD in heavy-ion collision experiments has sparked enormous interest with the completion of phase I of the RHIC beam energy scan. Here, I review the basics of the thermodynamics of the QCD phase transition and its implications for experimental multiplicity fluctuations in heavy-ion collisions. Several sources of noncritical fluctuations impact the observables and need to be understood in addition to the critical phenomena. Recent progress has been made in dynamical modeling of critical fluctuations, which ultimately is indispensable to understand potential …
In this talk, we report our recent studies for the chiral magnetic effect, which signals the P- and CP-violations at the heavy ion collisions. We compute the electric current and its correlations, induced by the external magnetic field, inside the hot and dense QCD matter created in the heavy ion collisions. For this purpose, we employ the instanton-liquid model, modified by the Harrington-Shepard caloron at finite T. We observe that the chiral magnetic effect current and its correlations increase with respect to the magnetic field, whereas they decrease as functions of T, due to the diluting …
The physics of the QCD phase diagram is discussed in view from heavy-ion collisions, compact astrophysical phenomena, lattice QCD and chiral effective models. We find that (T,mu_B) region probed in heavy-ion collisions and the black hole formation processes covers most of the critical point locations predicted in recent lattice QCD Monte-Carlo simulations and chiral effective models of QCD. We also discuss the consistency of the statistical model results and dynamical model description.
We study the local violation of P and CP invariance in heavy ion collisions as observed at RHIC and LHC using a simple "deformed QCD" model. This model is a weakly coupled gauge theory, which however has all the relevant crucial elements allowing us to study difficult and nontrivial questions which are known to be present in real strongly coupled QCD. Essentially, we want to understand the physics of long range order in form of coherent low dimensional vacuum configurations observed in Monte Carlo lattice simulations. Apparently precisely such kind of configurations are responsible for suffici…
We report measurements of diagonal susceptibilities for the baryon number, chi_B, electrical charge, chi_Q, third component of isospin, chi_I, strangeness, chi_S, and hypercharge, chi_Y, as well as the off-diagonal chi_BQ, chi_BY, chi_BS, etc. We show that the ratios of susceptibilities in the high temperature phase are robust variables, independent of lattice spacing, and therefore give predictions for experiments. We also investigate strangeness production and flavour symmetry breaking matrix elements at finite temperature. Finally, we present evidence that in the high temperature phase of Q…
We investigate viscous effects on the dynamical evolution of QCD matter during the first-order phase transition, which may happen in heavy-ion collisions. We first obtain the first-order phase transition line in the QCD phase diagram under the Gibbs condition by using the MIT bag model and the hadron resonance gas model for the equation of state of partons and hadrons. The viscous pressure, which corresponds to the friction in the energy balance, is then derived from the energy and net baryon number conservation during the phase transition. We find that the viscous pressure relates to the ther…
Based on the coalescence model for light nuclei production, we show that the yield ratio $\mathcal{O}_\text{p-d-t} = N_{^3\text{H}} N_p / N_\text{d}^2$ of $p$, d, and $^3$H in heavy-ion collisions is sensitive to the neutron relative density fluctuation $Δn= \langle (δn)^2\rangle/\langle n\rangle^2$ at kinetic freeze-out. From recent experimental data in central Pb+Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=6.3$~GeV, $7.6$~GeV, $8.8$~GeV, $12.3$~GeV and $17.3$~GeV measured by the NA49 Collaboration at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS), we find a possible non-monotonic behavior of $Δn$ as a function…
High energy heavy-ion collisions in laboratory produce a form of matter that can test Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), the theory of strong interactions, at high temperatures. One of the exciting possibilities is the existence of thermodynamically distinct states of QCD, particularly a phase of de-confined quarks and gluons. An important step in establishing this new state of QCD is to demonstrate that the system has attained thermal equilibrium. We present a test of thermal equilibrium by checking that the mean hadron yields produced in the small impact parameter collisions as well as grand cano…
We construct the QCD equation of state at finite chemical potentials including net baryon, electric charge, and strangeness, based on the conserved charge susceptibilities determined from lattice QCD simulations and the equation of state of the hadron resonance gas model. For the application to relativistic heavy ion collisions we consider the situation of strangeness neutrality and matter with a fixed electric charge-to-baryon ratio, resembling that of heavy nuclei. The importance of finite electric charge and strangeness chemical potentials for particle production in heavy ion collisions is …
Fluctuations of conserved quantities in heavy-ion collisions have been argued to be diagnostic tools for the nature of the produced phase. These can be related to the predictions of quark number susceptibilities (QNS) from lattice QCD. Using the diagonal QNS, we extracted the Wroblewski parameter in a dynamical QCD computation. Our results on the cross correlations χ_{BQ}, χ_{BY}, χ_{BS} and χ_{QY} allow us to explore the charge and baryon number of objects that carry flavour. We present evidence that in the high temperature phase of QCD the different flavour quantum numbers are excited in lin…
