In-medium Spectral Functions Research Articles

Probing the photon emissivity of the quark-gluon plasma without an inverse problem in lattice QCD

The thermal photon emissivity of the quark-gluon plasma is determined by the in-medium spectral function of the electromagnetic current at lightlike kinematics, σ(ω). In this work, we present the first lattice QCD results on moments of σ(ω)/ω, defined by the weight function 1/(ω2+(2πTn)2), n∈Z and computed without encountering an inverse problem. We employ two dynamical flavors of O(a)-improved Wilson fermions at a temperature T≈250 MeV and perform the continuum limit. We compare our results for the first two moments to those obtained dispersively by integrating over the spectral function computed at weak coupling by Arnold, Moore and Yaffe. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Fate of the ρ – a1 mixing in dilepton production

We investigate the effect of chiral mixing on dilepton production by combining the in-medium spectral function in the chiral effective field theory with the state-of-the-art fluid dynamical simulations. We compare the spectral functions with different chiral symmetry restoration scenarios: without chiral symmetry restoration, with chiral symmetry restoration, and the lowtemperature mixing theory extrapolated to high-temperature. We find that the scenario with proper chiral symmetry restoration that takes into account the degenerate ρ and a1 mesons leads to an increase of the yield in the window of 1.1 < M < 1.4 GeV. Whereas, the extrapolated low-temperature theorem leads to a substantial overestimate at M = 1.2 GeV.

In-medium effects in ϕ meson production in heavy-ion collisions from subthreshold to relativistic energies

We investigate the hidden strange $\phi$ meson production in heavy-ion collisions from subthreshold ($E_{kin}\approx 1$ A GeV) to relativistic ($E_{kin}\approx 21$ A TeV) energies as well as its coupling to the open strange mesons (kaons, antikaons) and their productions. Our study is based on the off-shell microscopic Parton-Hadron-String Dynamics (PHSD) transport approach which is applicable for the dynamical description of strongly interacting hadronic and partonic degrees-of-freedom created in heavy-ion collisions. Implementing novel meson-baryon and meson-hyperon production channels for $\phi$ mesons, calculated within a T-matrix coupled channel approach based on the extended SU(6) chiral effective Lagrangian model, along with the collisional broadening of the $\phi$-meson in-medium spectral function, we find a substantial enhancement of $\phi$ meson production in heavy-ion collisions, especially at sub- and near-thresholds. This allows to describe the experimentally observed strong enhancement of the $\phi/K^-$ ratio at low energies without including hypothetical decays of heavy baryonic resonances to $\phi$ as in alternative approaches. Moreover, we show that in spite of a stronger contribution from enhanced $\phi$ to $K^-$ production, the majority of the experimental data for different A+A systems at low energies favor the scenario with in-medium modifications of the kaon and antikaon properties in the hot and dense environment. Moreover, we study the influence of the final state interactions of $K, \bar K$ mesons on the reconstruction of $\phi$'s by the by invariant mass method.

Improved Gauss law model and in-medium heavy quarkonium at finite density and velocity

We explore the in-medium properties of heavy-quarkonium states at finite baryo-chemical potential and finite transverse momentum based on a modern complex-valued potential model. Our starting point is a novel, rigorous derivation of the generalized Gauss law for in-medium quarkonium, combining the non-perturbative physics of the vacuum bound state with a weak coupling description of the medium degrees of freedom. Its relation to previous models in the literature is discussed. We show that our approach is able to reproduce the complex lattice QCD heavy quark potential even in the non-perturbative regime, using a single temperature dependent parameter, the Debye mass $m_D$. After vetting the Gauss-law potential with state-of-the-art lattice QCD data, we extend it to the regime of finite baryon density and finite velocity, currently inaccessible to first principles simulations. In-medium spectral functions computed from the Gauss-law potential are subsequently used to estimate the $\psi'/J/\psi$ ratio in heavy-ion collisions at different beam energies and transverse momenta. We find qualitative agreement with the predictions from the statistical model of hadronization for the $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ dependence and a mild dependence on the transverse momentum.

Fluctuating vector mesons in analytically continued functional RG flow equations

In this work we study contributions due to vector and axial-vector meson fluctuations to their in-medium spectral functions in an effective low-energy theory inspired by the gauged linear sigma model. In particular, we show how to describe these fluctuations in the effective theory by massive (axial-)vector fields in agreement with the known structure of analogous single-particle or resonance contributions to the corresponding conserved currents. The vector and axial-vector meson spectral functions are then computed by numerically solving the analytically continued functional renormalization group flow equations for their retarded two-point functions at finite temperature and density in the effective theory. We identify the new contributions that arise due to the (axial-)vector meson fluctuations, and assess their influence on possible signatures of a QCD critical end point and the restoration of chiral symmetry in thermal dilepton spectra.

In-medium spectral functions and dilepton rates with the Functional Renormalization Group

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 particular, it is shown how the ρ and the a1 spectral function become degenerate at high temperatures or chemical potentials due to the restoration of chiral symmetry. Preliminary results for the EM spectral function and the dilepton production rate are discussed with a focus on the possibility to identify signatures of the chiral crossover and the critical endpoint (CEP) in the QCD phase diagram.

Color superconductivity from the chiral quark–meson model

We study the two-flavor color superconductivity of low-temperature quark matter in the vicinity of chiral phase transition in the quark–meson model where the interactions between quarks are generated by pion and sigma exchanges. Starting from the Nambu–Gorkov propagator in real-time formulation we obtain finite temperature (real axis) Eliashberg-type equations for the quark self-energies (gap functions) in terms of the in-medium spectral function of mesons. Exact numerical solutions of the coupled nonlinear integral equations for the real and imaginary parts of the gap function are obtained in the zero temperature limit using a model input spectral function. We find that these components of the gap display a complicated structure with the real part being strongly suppressed above 2Δ0, where Δ0 is its on-shell value. We find Δ0≃40MeV close to the chiral phase transition.

Non-perturbative Approach to Equation of State and Collective Modes of the QGP

We discuss a non-perturbative T-matrix approach to investigate the microscopic structure of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). Utilizing an effective Hamiltonian which includes both light- and heavy-parton degrees of freedoms. The basic two-body interaction includes color-Coulomb and confining contributions in all available color channels, and is constrained by lattice-QCD data for the heavy-quark free energy. The in-medium T-matrices and parton spectral functions are computed selfconsistently with full account of off-shell properties encoded in large scattering widths. We apply the T-matrices to calculate the equation of state (EoS) for the QGP, including a ladder resummation of the Luttinger-Ward functional using a matrix-log technique to account for the dynamical formation of bound states. It turns out that the latter become the dominant degrees of freedom in the EoS at low QGP temperatures indicating a transition from parton to hadron degrees of freedom. The calculated spectral properties of one- and two-body states confirm this picture, where large parton scattering rates dissolve the parton quasiparticle structures while broad resonances start to form as the pseudocritical temperature is approached from above. Further calculations of transport coefficients reveal a small viscosity and heavy-quark diffusion coefficient.

Low-mass electron pairs from Au+Au collisions at 1.23A GeV with HADES

Lepton pairs are considered as an ideal probe to access the microscopic properties of strongly-interacting matter under extreme conditions of temperature and density. The spectral distribution of lepton pairs in the region below the low mass vector mesons is characterized by an excess radiation above contributions from late meson decays, the so-called hadronic cocktail. It is theoretically understood as a thermal radiation based on Vector Meson Dominance assuming a strong broadening of the in-medium spectral function due to coupling to baryons and anti-baryons.In continuation of a systematic investigation of the emissivity of strongly interacting matter, HADES has recently measured the dielectron emission in Au+Au collisions at 1.23A GeV beam energy. The first measurement for Au+Au completes the systematics of dilepton production in NN/pA/AA collisions in the SIS18 energy range.This contribution will present new results for the Au+Au system based on a data sample of 5.0 billion events of the 40% most central collisions.

In-medium spectral functions of vector- and axial-vector mesons from the functional renormalization group

In this work we present first results on vector and axial-vector meson spectral functions as obtained by applying the non-perturbative functional renormalization group approach to an effective low-energy theory motivated by the gauged linear sigma model. By using a recently proposed analytic continuation method, we study the in-medium behavior of the spectral functions of the $\rho$ and $a_1$ mesons in different regimes of the phase diagram. In particular, we demonstrate explicitly how these spectral functions degenerate at high temperatures as well as at large chemical potentials, as a consequence of the restoration of chiral symmetry. In addition, we also compute the momentum dependence of the $\rho$ and $a_1$ spectral functions and discuss the various time-like and space-like processes that can occur.

Quarkonia at T > 0 and lattice QCD

We report here on recent progress in the determination of S-wave and P-wave heavy-quarkonium states at finite temperature. Our results are based on the combination of effective field theories with numerical lattice QCD simulations. These non-perturbative tools allow us to compute the heavy-quarkonium in-medium spectral functions, from which we in turn determine the melting temperatures of individual states and estimate phenomenologically relevant observables, such as the $\psi^\prime$ to J/$\psi$ ratio in heavy-ion collisions.

Energy, centrality, and momentum dependence of dielectron production at collider energies in a coarse-grained transport approach

Dilepton production in heavy-ion collisions at collider energies - i.e., for the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) - is studied within an approach that uses coarse-grained transport simulations to calculate thermal dilepton emission applying in-medium spectral functions from hadronic many-body theory and partonic production rates based on lattice calculations. The microscopic output from the Ultra-relativistic Quantum Molecular Dynamics (UrQMD) model is hereby put on a grid of space-time cells which allows to extract the local temperature and chemical potential in each cell via an equation of state. The resulting dilepton spectra are in good agreement with the experimental results for the range of RHIC energies, $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=19.6 - 200$ GeV. The comparison of data and model outcome shows that the newest measurements by the PHENIX and STAR collaborations are consistent and that the low-mass spectra can be described by a cocktail of hadronic decay contributions together with thermal emission from broadened vector-meson spectral functions and from the Quark-Gluon Plasma phase. Predictions for dilepton results at LHC energies show no significant change of the spectra as compared to RHIC, but a higher fraction of thermal contribution and harder slopes of the transverse momentum distributions due to the higher temperatures and flow obtained.

Thermal, chemical and spectral equilibration in heavy-ion collisions

We have considered the equilibration in relativistic heavy ion collisions at energies 1–7 A GeV using our transport model. We applied periodic boundary conditions to close the system in a box. We found that the thermal equilibration takes place in the first 20–40 fm/c whose time is comparable to the duration of a heavy ion collision. The chemical equilibration is a much slower process and the system does not equilibrate in a heavy ion collision. We have shown that in the testparticle simulation of the Boltzmann equation the mass spectra of broad resonances follow instantaneously their in-medium spectral functions as expected from the Markovian approximation to the Kadanoff–Baym equations employed via the (local) gradient expansion.

Dilepton production and reaction dynamics in heavy-ion collisions at SIS energies from coarse-grained transport simulations

Dilepton invariant-mass spectra for heavy-ion collisions at SIS 18 and BEVALAC energies are calculated using a coarse-grained time evolution from the Ultra-relativistic Quantum Molecular Dynamics (UrQMD) model. The coarse-graining of the microscopic simulations enables to calculate thermal dilepton emission rates by application of in-medium spectral functions from equilibrium quantum-field theoretical calculations. The results show that extremely high baryon chemical potentials dominate the evolution of the created hot and dense fireball. Consequently, a significant modification of the $\rho$ spectral shape becomes visible in the dilepton invariant-mass spectrum, resulting in an enhancement in the low-mass region $M_{ee} = 200$ to 600 MeV/$c^{2}$. This enhancement, mainly caused by baryonic effects on the $\rho$ spectral shape, can fully describe the experimentally observed excess above the hadronic cocktail contributions in Ar+KCl ($E_{\mathrm{lab}}=1.76$ $A$GeV) reactions as measured by the HADES collaboration and also gives a good explanation of the older DLS Ca+Ca ($E_{\mathrm{lab}}=1.04$ $A$GeV) data. For the larger Au+Au ($E_{\mathrm{lab}}=1.23$ $A$GeV) system, we predict an even stronger excess from our calculations. A systematic comparison of the results for different system sizes from C+C to Au+Au shows that the thermal dilepton yield increases stronger ($\propto A^{4/3}$) than the hadronic background contributions, which scale with $A$, due to its sensitivity on the time evolution of the reaction. We stress that the findings of the present work are consistent with our previous coarse-graining results for the NA60 measurements at top SPS energy. We argue that it is possible to describe the dilepton results from SIS 18 up to SPS energies by considering the modifications of the $\rho$ spectral function inside a hot and dense medium within the same model.

Coarse-graining approach for dilepton production at energies available at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron

Coarse-grained output from transport calculations is used to determine thermal dilepton emission rates by applying medium-modified spectral functions from thermal quantum field theoretical models. By averaging over an ensemble of events generated with the Ultrarelativistic Quantum Molecular Dynamics (UrQMD) transport model, we extract the local thermodynamic properties at each time step of the calculation. With an equation of state the temperature $T$ and chemical potential ${\ensuremath{\mu}}_{\mathrm{B}}$ can be determined. The approach goes beyond simplified fireball models of the bulk-medium evolution by treating the full (3+1)-dimensional expansion of the system with realistic time and density profiles. For the calculation of thermal dilepton rates we use the in-medium spectral function of the $\ensuremath{\rho}$ meson developed by Rapp and Wambach and consider thermal quark-gluon plasma (QGP) and multipion contributions as well. The approach is applied to the evaluation of dimuon production in In+In collisions at top CERN Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) energy. Comparison to the experimental results of the NA60 experiment shows good agreement of this ansatz. We find that the experimentally observed low-mass dilepton excess in the mass region from 0.2 to 0.6 GeV can be explained by a broadening of the $\ensuremath{\rho}$ spectral function with a small mass shift. In contrast, the intermediate-mass region $(M>1.5$ GeV) is dominated by a contribution from the quark-gluon plasma. These findings agree with previous calculations with fireball parametrizations. This agreement, in spite of differences in the reaction dynamics between both approaches, indicates that the time-integrated dilepton spectra are not very sensitive to details of the space-time evolution of the collision.

In-medium Spectral Functions in a Coarse-Graining Approach

We use a coarse-graining approach to extract local thermodynamic properties from simulations with a microscopic transport model by averaging over a large ensemble of events. Setting up a grid of small space-time cells and going into each cell's rest frame allows to determine baryon and energy density. With help of an equation of state we get the corresponding temperature T and baryon-chemical potential μB. These results are used for the calculation of the thermal dilepton yield. We apply and compare two different spectral functions for the ρ meson, firstly a calculation from hadronic many-body theory and secondly a calculation from experimental scattering amplitudes. The results obtained with our approach are compared to measurements of the NA60 Collaboration. A relatively good description of the data is achieved with both spectral functions. However, the hadronic many-body calculation is found to be closer to the experimental data with regard to the in-medium broadening of the spectral shape.

A Comparative Analysis of In-Medium Spectral Functions for N(940) and N ∗(1535) in Real-Time Thermal Field Theory

In the real-time thermal field theory, the nucleon self-energy at finite temperature and density is evaluated where an extensive set of pion-baryon ($\pi B$) loops are considered. On the other side the in-medium self-energy of $N^*(1535)$ for $\pi N$ and $\eta N$ loops is also determined in the same framework. The detail branch cut structures for these different $\pi B$ loops for nucleon $N(940)$ and $\pi N$, $\eta N$ loops for $N^*(1535)$ are addressed. Using the total self-energy of $N(940)$ and $N^*(1535)$, which contain the contributions of their corresponding loop diagrams, the complete structures of their in-medium spectral functions have been obtained. The Landau and unitary cut contributions provide two separate peak structures in the nucleon spectral function while $N^*(1535)$ has single peak structure in its unitary cuts. At high temperature, the peak structures of both at their individual poles are attenuated while at high density Landau peak structure of nucleon is completely suppressed and its unitary peak structure is tending to be shifted towards the melted peak of $N^*(1535)$. The non-trivial modifications of these chiral partners may indicate some association of chiral symmetry restoration.

Low mass enhanced probability of pion in hadronic matter due to its Landau cut contributions

In the real-time thermal field theory, the pion self-energy at finite temperature and density is evaluated where the different mesonic and baryonic loops are considered. The interactions of pion with the other mesons and baryons in the medium are governed by the effective hadronic Lagrangian densities whose effective strength of coupling constants have been determined from the experimental decay widths of the mesons and baryons. The detail branch cut structures of these different mesonic and baryonic loops are analyzed. The Landau cut contributions of different baryon and meson loops become only relevant around the pion pole and it is completely appeared in presence of medium. The in-medium spectral function of pion has been plotted for different values of temperature, baryon chemical potential as well as three momentum of the pion. A noticeable low mass probability in pion spectral function promise to contribute in the low mass dilepton enhancement via indirect modification of ρ self-energy for loop.

In-Medium Quarkonia at SPS, RHIC and LHC

A kinetic-rate equation approach in a thermally expanding medium is employed to calculate the evolution of charmonium and bottomonium distributions in heavy-ion collisions. The equilibrium properties of the quarkonia are taken from in-medium spectral functions which are schematically constrained by euclidean correlators from lattice QCD. The initial conditions for the rate equation (heavy-flavor cross sections, nuclear absorption) and the thermal evolution are constrained by light-hadron data as available. After fixing two free parameters to describe charmonium data at SPS and RHIC, the predictions for LHC are discussed in light of recent data.

Quantitative sum rule analysis of low-temperature spectral functions

We analyze QCD and Weinberg-type sum rules in a low-temperature pion gas using vector and axial-vector spectral functions following from the model-independent chiral-mixing scheme. Toward this end we employ recently constructed vacuum spectral functions with ground and first-excited states in both channels and a universal perturbative continuum; they quantitatively describe hadronic $\ensuremath{\tau}$-decay data and satisfy vacuum sum rules. These features facilitate the implementation of chiral mixing without further assumptions, and lead to in-medium spectral functions which exhibit a mutual tendency of compensating resonance and dip structures, suggestive for an approach toward structureless distributions. In the sum rule analysis, we account for pion mass corrections, which turn out to be significant. While the Weinberg sum rules remain satisfied even at high temperatures, the numerical evaluation of the QCD sum rules for vector and axial-vector channels reveals significant deviations setting in for temperatures beyond $\ensuremath{\sim}140\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{MeV}$, suggestive of additional physics beyond low-energy chiral pion dynamics.