Quark-gluon Plasma Research Articles

Far-from-equilibrium slow modes and momentum anisotropy in an expanding plasma

The momentum distribution of particle production in heavy-ion collisions encodes information about thermalization processes in the early-stage quark-gluon plasma. We use kinetic theory to study the far-from-equilibrium evolution of an expanding plasma with an anisotropic momentum-space distribution. We identify slow and fast degrees of freedom in the far-from-equilibrium plasma from the evolution of moments of this distribution. At late times, the slow modes correspond to hydrodynamic degrees of freedom and are naturally gapped from the fast modes by the inverse of the relaxation time, τR−1. At early times, however, there are an infinite number of slow modes with a gap inversely proportional to time, τ−1. From the evolution of the slow modes we generalize the paradigm of the far-from-equilibrium attractor to vector and tensor components of the energy-momentum tensor, and even to higher moments of the distribution function that are not part of the hydrodynamic evolution. We predict that initial-state momentum anisotropy decays slowly in the far-from-equilibrium phase and may persist until the relaxation time. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Hadronization of heavy quarks

Heavy-flavor hadrons produced in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions are a sensitive probe for studying hadronization mechanisms of the quark-gluon-plasma. In this paper, we survey how different transport models for the simulation of heavy-quark diffusion through a quark-gluon plasma in heavy-ion collisions implement hadronization and how this affects final state observables. Utilizing the same input charm-quark distribution in all models at the hadronization transition, we find that the transverse-momentum dependence of the nuclear modification factor of various charm hadron species has significant sensitivity to the hadronization scheme. In addition, the charm-hadron elliptic flow exhibits a nontrivial dependence on the elliptic flow of the hadronizing partonic medium. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Effects of tensor spin polarization on the chiral restoration and deconfinement phase transitions

Effects of tensor spin polarization (TSP) on the chiral restoration and deconfinement phase transitions are studied in Polyakov loop extended Nambu–Jona-Lasinio (PNJL) model. For chiral phase transition, the higher the polarized degree of quark-antiquark pairs under the strong magnetic field, the higher the phase transition temperature. The TSP corrects the position of the critical end point. The small impact of TSP on the phase transition temperature is found for the deconfinement phase transition. On the other hand, we divide the phase space into three ranges based on the phase diagram obtained from the PNJL model: the confinement phase with chiral symmetry broken, the deconfinement phase with restored chiral symmetry, and the confinement phase with restored chiral symmetry (quarkyonic phase). It is found that TSP has only a very small effect on the anisotropic pressure in the deconfined phase with chiral symmetry restored and the quarkyonic phase, but it has a very strong effect on the anisotropic pressure in the confined phase with chiral symmetry broken. This is because TSP is closely related to chiral symmetry. The restoration of chiral symmetry means the dissociation of spin polarization condensate. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Unraveling the collisional energy loss of a heavy quark in a quark-gluon plasma

At leading order in the QCD coupling constant, we compute the energy loss per traveling distance of a heavy quark dE/dz from elastic scattering off thermal quarks and gluons at a temperature T, including the thermal perturbative description of soft scatterings (−t<−t*) and a perturbative QCD-based calculation for hard collisions (−t>−t*). Within this soft-hard factorization model, we find that the full results of dE/dz behaves a mild sensitivity to the intermediate cutoff t*, supporting the validity of the soft-hard approach within the temperature region of interest. We rederive the analytic formula for dE/dz in the high-energy approximation, E1≫m12/T, where E1 is the injected heavy quark energy and m1 is its mass. It is realized that the soft logarithmic contribution, dE/dz∝ln(−t*/mD2), arises from the t-channel scattering off thermal partons, while the hard logarithmic term, dE/dz∝ln[E1T/(−t*)], stems from the t-channel scattering off thermal partons, and the one dE/dz∝ln(E1T/m12) comes from the s- and u-channel scattering off gluons. The sum of these contributions cancels the t*-dependence as observed in the full result. The mass hierarchy is observed dE/dz(charm)>dE/dz(bottom). Our full results are crucial for a better description of heavy quark transport in QCD medium, in particular at low and moderate energy. We also calculate the energy loss by imposing the Einstein’s relationship. The related results appear to be systematically larger than that without imposing the Einstein’s relationship. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Deciphering yield modification of hadron-triggered semi-inclusive recoil jets in heavy-ion collisions

In relativistic heavy-ion collisions, a hot and dense state of matter, called the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP), is produced. Semi-inclusive jets recoiling from trigger hadrons of high transverse momenta (pT) can serve as an effective probe of the QGP properties, as they are expected to experience jet quenching when traversing the QGP. Recent experimental results on the ratio of recoil jet yields normalized by the trigger counts in heavy-ion collisions to that in p+p collisions (IAA) pose an unexpected challenge in its interpretation. It is observed that IAA rises with the jet pT and possibly exceeds unity at high pT, while traditionally it is expected that jet quenching would lead to IAA<1. To address this challenge, we utilize the Linear Boltzmann Transport (LBT) model to simulate jet transport in the QGP, and study the effect of jet quenching for high-pT triggers and recoil jets separately on IAA. We find that the quenching of the colored triggers alone is responsible for the rising trend and larger-than-unity value observed experimentally.

Azimuthal Angle Correlations of Muons Produced via Heavy-Flavor Decays in 5.02TeV Pb+Pb and pp Collisions with the ATLAS Detector.

Angular correlations between heavy quarks provide a unique probe of the quark-gluon plasma created in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions. Results are presented of a measurement of the azimuthal angle correlations between muons originating from semileptonic decays of heavy quarks produced in 5.02TeV Pb+Pb and pp collisions at the LHC. The muons are measured with transverse momenta and pseudorapidities satisfying p_{T}^{μ}>4 GeV and |η^{μ}|<2.4, respectively. The distributions of azimuthal angle separation Δϕ for muon pairs having pseudorapidity separation |Δη|>0.8, are measured in different Pb+Pb centrality intervals and compared to the same distribution measured in pp collisions at the same center-of-mass energy. Results are presented separately for muon pairs with opposite-sign charges, same-sign charges, and all pairs. A clear peak is observed in all Δϕ distributions at Δϕ∼π, consistent with the parent heavy-quark pairs being produced via hard-scattering processes. The widths of that peak, characterized using Cauchy-Lorentz fits to the Δϕ distributions, are found to not vary significantly as a function of Pb+Pb collision centrality and are similar for pp and Pb+Pb collisions. This observation will provide important constraints on theoretical descriptions of heavy-quark interactions with the quark-gluon plasma.

Novel instabilities in counter-streaming nonabelian fluids

The dynamics of strongly interacting particles are governed by Yang–Mills (Y–M) theory, which is a natural generalization of Maxwell Electrodynamics (ED). Its quantized version is known as quantum chromodynamics (QCD) (Gross and Wilczek, 1973; Politzer, 1973; ’t Hooft, 1972[1–3]) and has been very well studied. Classical Y–M theory is proving to be equally interesting because of the central role it plays in describing the physics of quark–gluon plasma (QGP) — which was prevalent in the early universe and is also produced in relativistic heavy ion collision experiments. This calls for a systematic study of classical Y–M theories. A good insight into classical Y–M dynamics would be best obtained by comparing and contrasting the Y–M results with their ED counterparts. In this article, a beginning has been made by considering streaming instabilities in Y–M fluids. We find that in addition to analogues of ED instabilities, novel nonabelian modes arise, reflecting the inherent nonabelian nature of the interaction. The new modes exhibit propagation/ growth, with growth rates that can be larger than what we find in ED. Interestingly, we also find a mode that propagates without getting affected by the medium.

Applying deep learning technique to chiral magnetic wave search* *Supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai (23JC1400200), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (12225502, 12075061, 12147101) and the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2022YFA1604900)

The chiral magnetic wave (CMW) is a collective mode in quark-gluon plasma originated from the chiral magnetic effect (CME) and chiral separation effect. Its detection in heavy-ion collisions is challenging owing to significant background contamination. In [Y. S. Zhao et al., Phys. Rev. C 106, L051901 (2022)], we constructed a neural network that accurately identifies the CME-related signal from the final-state pion spectra. In this study, we have generalized this neural network to the case of CMW search. We show that, after an updated training, the neural network effectively recognizes the CMW-related signal. Additionally, we have assessed the performance of the neural network in comparison with other known methods for CMW search.

Di-electron production at the LHC: unravelling virtual-photon and heavy-flavour contributions

The production of virtual photons is a very sensitive probe of the properties of the quark-gluon plasma. As they are experimentally detected by lepton pairs, they suffer from a large background arising from hadron decays. Light-flavour hadrons dominate at low invariant masses below mee ~ 0.5 GeV and heavy flavours above. These contributions must therefore also be taken into account in experimental analyses at the LHC. In this paper, we calculate the direct contribution from virtual photons produced in the Drell-Yan process with an additional jet in POWHEG and find that it is significant at low invariant masses. We also simulate the background contributions from cc¯\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ c\\overline{c} $$\\end{document} and bb¯\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ b\\overline{b} $$\\end{document} production with POWHEG and quantify the theoretical uncertainties due to variations of the perturbative scales and parton distribution functions. We find larger relative and absolute uncertainties for the lighter c quarks than for heavier b quarks.

Gravitational Waves of Holographic QCD Phase Transition with Hyperscaling Violation

In this paper, we study the gravitational waves of holographic QCD phase transition with hyperscaling violation. We consider an Einstein–Maxwell Dilaton background and discuss the confinement–deconfinement phase transition between thermally charged AdS and AdS black holes. We find that hyperscaling violation reduces the phase transition temperature. In a further study, we discuss the effect of hyperscaling violation on the GW spectrum. We found that the hyperscaling violation exponent suppresses the peak frequency of the total GW spectrum. Moreover, the results of the GW spectrum may be detected by IPTA, SKA, BBO, and NANOGrav. We also find that the hyperscaling violation exponent suppresses the peak frequency of the bubble-collision spectrum h2Ωenv. Hyperscaling violation enhances the energy densities of the sound wave spectrum h2Ωsw and the MHD turbulence spectrum h2Ωturb. The total GW spectrum is dominated by the contribution of the bubble collision in runaway bubbles case.

Quenching and flow of charm and bottom quarks via semi-leptonic decay of D and B mesons in Pb+Pb collisions at the LHC* *Supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (12225503, 11935007, 11890710, 11890711, 12175122, 2021-867). W.-J. X. is supported in part by China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2023M742099). Some of the calculations were performed in the Nuclear

Heavy flavor particles provide important probes of the microscopic structure and thermodynamic properties of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) produced in high-energy nucleus-nucleus collisions. We studied the energy loss and flow of charm and bottom quarks inside the QGP via the nuclear modification factor ( ) and elliptic flow coefficient ( ) of their decayed leptons in heavy-ion collisions at the LHC. The dynamical evolution of the QGP was performed using the CLVisc (3+1)-dimensional viscous hydrodynamics model; the evolution of heavy quarks inside the QGP was simulated with our improved Langevin model that considers both collisional and radiative energy loss of heavy quarks; the hadronization of heavy quarks was simulated via our hybrid coalescence-fragmentation model; and the semi-leptonic decay of D and B mesons was simulated via PYTHIA. Using the same spatial diffusion coefficient for charm and bottom quarks, we obtained smaller and larger of charm decayed leptons than bottom decayed leptons, indicating stronger energy loss of charm quarks than bottom quarks inside the QGP within our current model setup.

Measurement of forward charged hadron flow harmonics in peripheral PbPb collisions at sNN=5.02TeV with the LHCb detector

Flow harmonic coefficients, vn, which are the key to studying the hydrodynamics of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) created in heavy-ion collisions, have been measured in various collision systems and kinematic regions and using various particle species. The study of flow harmonics in a wide pseudorapidity range is particularly valuable to understand the temperature dependence of the shear viscosity to entropy density ratio of the QGP. This paper presents the first LHCb results of the second- and the third-order flow harmonic coefficients of charged hadrons as a function of transverse momentum in the forward region, corresponding to pseudorapidities between 2.0 and 4.9, using the data collected from PbPb collisions in 2018 at a center-of-mass energy of 5.02 TeV. The coefficients measured using the two-particle angular correlation analysis method are smaller than the central-pseudorapidity measurements at ALICE and ATLAS from the same collision system but share similar features. ©2024 CERN, for the LHCb Collaboration 2024 CERN

Non-hydrodynamic response in QCD-like plasma

Quark-gluon plasma’s (QGP) properties at non-hydrodynamic and non-perturbative regimes remain largely unexplored. Here, we examine the response functions describing how a QGP-like plasma responds to initial energy-momentum disturbance in both static and Bjorken-expanding plasma at non-hydrodynamic gradient using the Boltzmann equation in the relaxation-time approximation (RTA). We show that the resulting response functions are remarkably similar in both static and expanding backgrounds at non-hydrodynamic gradients. While non-hydrodynamic response can not be described by the conventional first-order and second-order theories, its behavior is reasonably captured by the extended version of hydrodynamics proposed by us [1]. The potential sensitivity of the Euclidean correlator to non-hydrodynamic response is also illustrated.

Thermodynamic signatures and phase transitions in high-energy Au–Au collision

In this study, we systematically investigate the dynamics of various hadrons namely π +, π −, K +, K −, p, p¯ , Λ, Λ¯ , Ξ− and Ξ¯+ produced in central Au–Au collisions. We analyze data of AGS and RHIC, which span a broad range of collision energies, ranging from sNN = 1.9 to 200 GeV. To analyze the transverse momentum (p T ) and transverse mass (m T ) distributions, we employ a two-component standard distribution function, achieving a very good representation of the experimental data across these energy regimes. We extract key thermodynamic parameters, including the effective temperature T, the mean transverse momentum 〈p T 〉, and the initial temperature T i , and analyze their dependence on the values of collision energy and particle mass. Our findings reveal a distinct transition behaviour around sNN=19.6GeV . Below sNN=19.6GeV , the values of T, 〈p T 〉, and T i increase monotonically for all hadrons due to higher energy transfer into the system. Above this energy threshold, these extracted parameters plateau, suggesting that the additional energy is utilized as latent heat for phase transition rather than increasing the system’s temperature. These observations delineate two distinct regions: a hadron-dominated region at lower energies and a parton-dominated region at higher energies, each potentially indicative of different phases of matter, with the latter possibly signalling the onset of a quark–gluon plasma. The study thus provides critical insights into the complex interplay of thermodynamics, phase transitions, and particle interactions in high-energy Au–Au collisions.

Numerical evidence for fractional topological objects in SU(3) gauge theory

The continued development of models that propose the existence of fractional topological objects in the Yang-Mills vacuum has called for a quantitative method to study the topological structure of SU(N) gauge theory. We present an original numerical algorithm that can identify distinct topological objects in the nontrivial ground-state fields and approximate the net charge contained within them. This analysis is performed for SU(3) color at a range of temperatures crossing the deconfinement phase transition, allowing for an assessment of how the topological structure evolves with temperature. We find a promising consistency with the instanton-dyon model for the structure of the QCD vacuum at finite temperature. Several other quantities, such as object density and radial size, are also analyzed to elicit a further understanding of the fundamental structure of ground-state gluon fields. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Asymmetric jet shapes with two-dimensional jet tomography

Two-dimensional (2D) jet tomography is a promising tool to study jet medium modification in high-energy heavy-ion collisions. It combines gradient (transverse) and longitudinal jet tomography for selection of events with localized initial jet production positions. It exploits the transverse asymmetry and energy loss that depend, respectively, on the transverse gradient and jet path length inside the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). In this study, we employ 2D jet tomography to study medium modification of the jet shape of γ-triggered jets within the linear Boltzmann transport (LBT) model for jet propagation in heavy-ion collisions. Our results show that jets with small transverse asymmetry (ANn⃗) or small γ-jet asymmetry (xJγ=pTjet/pTγ) exhibit a broader jet shape than those with larger ANn⃗ or xJγ, since the former are produced at the center and go through longer path lengths while the later are off center and close to the surface of the QGP fireball. In events with finite values of ANn⃗, jet shapes are asymmetric with respect to the event plane. Hard partons at the core of the jet are deflected away from the denser region while soft partons from the medium response at large angles flow toward the denser part of QGP. Future experimental measurements of these asymmetric features of the jet shape can be used to study the transport properties of jets and medium responses. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Baryon-density dependence of viscosities of the quark-gluon plasma at hadronization

Baryon-density dependence of viscosities of the quark-gluon plasma at hadronization

Energy hierarchies governing quarkonium dynamics in heavy ion collisions

In this paper, we critically examine hierarchies between the energy scales that determine quarkonium dynamics in the quark gluon plasma. A particularly important role is played by the ratio of the binding energy of species (Eb) and the medium scales; temperature (T) and Debye mass (mD). It is well known that if these ratios are much larger than 1 then the dominant process governing quarkonium evolution is dissociation by thermal gluons (gluodissociation). On the other hand, if the ratio Eb/T is much smaller than one then quarkonium dynamics is dominated by screening and Landau damping of the exchanged gluons. Here we show that over most of the evolution, the scale hierarchies do not fall in either limit and one needs to use the full structure of the gluonic spectral function to follow the dynamics of the QQ¯ pair. This has a significant bearing when we follow the quantum dynamics of quarkonia in the medium. The inverse medium relaxation time is also ≈T and if Eb is comparable (or larger) in magnitude to T, the quantum evolution of QQ¯ is nonlocal in time within the Brownian approximation. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Radiative corrections for factorized jet observables in heavy ion collisions

I look at the renormalization of the medium structure function and a medium induced jet function in a factorized cross section for jet substructure observables in Heavy Ion collisions. This is based on the formalism developed in [1], which uses an Open quantum system approach combined with the Effective Field Theory (EFT) for forward scattering to derive a factorization formula for jet observables which work as hard probes of a long lived dilute Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP) medium. I show that the universal medium structure function that captures the observable independent physics of the QGP has both rapidity and UV anomalous dimensions that appear due to medium induced Bremsstrahlung. The resulting Renormalization Group (RG) equations correspond to the BFKL equation and the running of the QCD coupling respectively. I present the first results for the numerical impact of resummation using these RG equations on the mean free path of the jet in the medium. I also briefly discuss the prospects of extending this formalism for a short lived dense medium.

Accelerated quantum circuit Monte Carlo simulation for heavy quark thermalization

Thermalization of heavy quarks in the quark-gluon plasma is one of the most promising phenomena for understanding the strong interaction. The energy loss and momentum broadening at low momentum can be well described by a stochastic process with drag and diffusion terms. Recent advances in quantum computing, in particular, quantum amplitude estimation (QAE), promise to provide a quadratic speedup in simulating stochastic processes. We introduce and formalize an accelerated quantum circuit Monte Carlo (aQCMC) framework to simulate heavy quark thermalization. With simplified drag and diffusion coefficients connected by Einstein’s relation, we simulate the thermalization of a heavy quark in isotropic and anisotropic mediums using an ideal quantum simulator and compare that to thermal expectations. With Grover-like QAE, we calculate physical observables with quadratically fewer resources, which is a boost over the classical MC simulation that usually requires a large sampling number at the same estimation accuracy. Published by the American Physical Society 2024