Search

State-of-the-art simulations of high-energy nuclear collisions rely on hybrid setups, involving in particular a pre-equilibrium stage to let the system evolve from a far-from-equilibrium initial condition towards a near-equilibrated state after which fluid dynamics can be applied meaningfully. A known issue is the mismatch between the equation of state in the fluid-dynamical evolution and the effective one in the previous stage, which leads to discontinuities at the interface between the two models. Here we introduce a new matching prescription at this interface, based on the entropy, and we compare it with the standard one relying on local energy conservation. We study the behavior of various quantities at the switching time between the models and investigate a number of final-state hadronic observables. For the latter, we show that they are not modified significantly by the choice of matching prescription, provided an appropriate normalization is chosen for the initial state. In turn, our approach reduces sizeably the ratio of bulk over thermodynamic pressure at the beginning of the fluid-dynamical stage., Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures. v2: published version

We determine the uncorrelated modes that characterize the fluctuations in a semi-realistic model for the initial state of high-energy nuclear collisions, consisting of hot spots whose positions are distributed independently. Varying the number of hot spots, their size, and the weights with which they contribute to the initial state, we find that the parameter that has the largest influence on the relative importance of the fluctuation modes is the source size, with more extended hot spots leading to a more marked predominance of the principal modes., Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures + supplemental material: 16 figures on 15 pages

We develop a general decomposition of an ensemble of initial density profiles in terms of an average state and a basis of modes that represent the event-by-event fluctuations of the initial state. The basis is determined such that the probability distributions of the amplitudes of different modes are uncorrelated. Based on this decomposition, we quantify the different types and probabilities of event-by-event fluctuations in Glauber and Saturation models and investigate how the various modes affect different characteristics of the initial state. We perform simulations of the dynamical evolution with KoMPoST and MUSIC to investigate the impact of the modes on final-state observables and their correlations., Comment: v2: final version: minor additions, 59 pages, 40 figures (depending on the viewer, Figs.22-25 may display incorrectly)

To assess how anisotropic transverse flow is created in a system out of equilibrium, we compare several kinetic-theoretical models in the few-rescatterings regime. We compare the flow harmonics $v_n$ from three types of transport simulations, with either $2\to 2$ or $2\to 0$ collision kernels and in the former case allowing the particles to rescatter several times or not, and from analytical calculations neglecting the gain term of the Boltzmann equation. We find that the even flow harmonics are similar in all approaches, while the odd ones differ significantly. This suggests that while even $v_n$ harmonics may to a large extent be due to the anisotropic escape probability of particles, this is not the predominant mechanism underlying the odd $v_n$ coefficients., Comment: v2: expanded version (final): new title, 18 pages, 14 figures

We investigate the early time development of the anisotropic transverse flow and spatial eccentricities of a fireball with various particle-based transport approaches using a fixed initial condition. In numerical simulations ranging from the quasi-collisionless case to the hydrodynamic regime, we find that the onset of $v_n$ and of related measures of anisotropic flow can be described with a simple power-law ansatz, with an exponent that depends on the amount of rescatterings in the system. In the few-rescatterings regime we perform semi-analytical calculations, based on a systematic expansion in powers of time and the cross section, which can reproduce the numerical findings., Comment: 19 pages, 30 plots in 17 figures. Version 2: published version

We derive a general formula for the early time dependence of a phase space distribution evolving according to the kinetic Boltzmann equation. Assuming that the early evolution of the system created in high-energy nuclear collisions can be described by kinetic theory, we calculate the scaling behaviors for the onset of various characteristics of the transverse dynamics. In particular, we show that the scaling behavior of the anisotropic flow coefficients $v_n$ at early times does not depend on the details of the collision kernel or the system composition, while at the same time it differs from the prediction of fluid dynamics., Comment: 15 pages. v2: published version

We investigate the fluctuations of anisotropic transverse flow due to the finite number of scatterings in a two-dimensional system of massless particles. Using a set of initial geometries from a Monte Carlo Glauber model, we study how flow coefficients fluctuate about their mean value at the corresponding eccentricity, for several values of the scattering cross section. We also show how the distributions of the second and third event planes of anisotropic flow about the corresponding participant plane in the initial geometry evolve as a function of the mean number of scatterings in the system., Comment: v2: final version, 17 pages, 12 figures

We calculate the elliptic flow of bottomonia produced in Pb$\,+\,$Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}=5.02$ TeV. We consider temperature-dependent decay widths for the anisotropic escape of various bottomonium states and observe that the transverse momentum dependence of bottomonia elliptic flow provides a tomographic information about the QGP fireball at different stages of its evolution. For the space-time evolution of the fireball, we employ simulation results from the 3+1D quasiparticle anisotropic hydrodynamic model. We find that our results for transverse momentum dependence of bottomonia elliptic flow are in reasonable agreement with experimental results from the ALICE and CMS collaborations., Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, ancillary files with data of the figures are included in the source

Considering the kinetic Boltzmann equation in the limit of very few collisions, we study the evolution of the phase space distribution of bottomonia interacting with an expanding gas of massless partons. We investigate the scaling of the anisotropic flow coefficients on the initial eccentricities and the inverse Knudsen number, and compute their transverse momentum dependence., Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, Presented by N.K. at Hot Quarks 2018 - Workshop for young scientists on the physics of ultrarelativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions, Texel, The Netherlands, September 7-14 2018, Submitted to MDPI Proceedings. v2: Figure corrected + minor changes

We study the role of anisotropic escape in generating the elliptic flow of bottomonia produced in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions. We implement temperature-dependent decay widths for the various bottomonium states, to calculate their survival probability when traversing through the anisotropic hot medium formed in non-central collisions. We employ the recently developed 3+1d quasiparticle anisotropic hydrodynamic simulation to model the space-time evolution of the quark-gluon plasma. We provide a quantitative prediction for transverse momentum dependence of bottomonium elliptic flow and nuclear modification factor for Pb$\,+\,$Pb collisions in $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}=2.76$ TeV at the Large Hadron Collider., Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures; extensively revised text, significant new results

We consider the development of anisotropic flow in an expanding system of particles undergoing very few rescatterings, using a kinetic-theoretical description with a nonlinear collision term. We derive the scaling behaviors of the harmonic coefficients $v_n$ with the initial-state eccentricities and the mean number of rescatterings, and argue that hexagonal flow $v_6$ should follow a nontrivial behavior, different from that of the lower harmonics. Our findings should be observable in experimental data for small systems., Comment: published version

Dissipative relativistic fluid-dynamical descriptions of the extended fireball formed in high-energy heavy-ion collisions are quite successful, yet require a prescription for converting the fluid into particles. We present arguments in favour of using a locally anisotropic momentum distribution for the particles emitted from the fluid, so as to smooth out discontinuities introduced by the usual conversion prescriptions. Building on this ansatz, we investigate the effect of the asymmetry on several observables of heavy ion physics., Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures; v2: accepted for publication in Eur. Phys. J. C

A significant fraction of the changes in momentum distributions induced by dissipative phenomena in the description of the fluid fireball created in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions actually take place when the fluid turns into individual particles. We study these corrections in the limit of a low freeze-out temperature of the flowing medium, and we show that they mostly affect particles with a higher velocity than the fluid. For these, we derive relations between different flow harmonics, from which the functional form of the dissipative corrections could ultimately be reconstructed from experimental data., Comment: v2 (accepted for publication): 11 pages, 3 figures

According to the usual application of the sequential-suppression picture to the dynamics of heavy quarkonia in the hot medium formed in ultrarelativistic nuclear collisions, quark-antiquark pairs created in a given bound or unbound state remain in that same state as the medium evolves. We argue that this scenario implicitly assumes an adiabatic evolution of the quarkonia, and we show that the validity of the adiabaticity assumption is questionable., Comment: 3 pages

The problem of the evolution of a heavy quarkonium in a medium can be recast as that of a quantum dissipative system. Within the framework of the master-equation approach to open quantum systems, we consider the real-time dynamics of quarkonia. We find that in a plasma at fixed temperature, the populations of the various quarkonium states evolve together, while their momentum distribution satisfies a Fokker-Planck equation., Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures. Version 2 matches the published version

Analytical results for the anisotropic collective flow of a Lorentz gas of massless particles scattering on fixed centres are presented., Comment: 8 pages, 1 figure. This is an extended version of what is being submitted (4 pages) to the proceedings of Quark Matter 2011, Annecy, May 22-28. v2: typos corrected

We investigate some consequences of the possibility that heavy quarkonia in a quark-gluon plasma possess different (quasi-) bound states, between which transitions are possible. In particular, we show that the time-evolution eigenstates in the medium are mixtures of the vacuum eigenstates. This leads to abundance ratios of quarkonia that differ from those predicted in statistical models or in the sequential-melting picture., Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures

We compute analytically the anisotropic flow in an expanding mixture of several species of relativistic massive particles. We find that a single collision per particle in average already leads to sizable elliptic flow, with mass ordering between the species., Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures. v2: journal version (a few typos corrected, extra acknowledgments added)

After a discussion on the meaning of "jets" in the context of nucleus-nucleus collisions, the distortions of the profile of a parton shower induced by the presence of a medium is investigated in a QCD-inspired model that implements the conservation of energy at each step of the shower evolution., Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures; talk given at the workshop "High-pT physics at LHC 2009", February 4-7, Prague, Czech Republic

The modifications of the angular and transverse momentum distributions of quarks and gluons inside a parton shower due to the presence of a medium are studied within an analytical description that reduces to the modified leading logarithmic approximation (MLLA) of QCD in the absence of medium., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures. v2: published version

The effect of the correlation induced by global momentum conservation on the two-particle distribution in nucleus-nucleus collisions is discussed, with a focus on the generic case of collisions with a non-vanishing impact parameter., Comment: 5 pages, invited talk at the RHIC & AGS Annual Users' Meeting, Brookhaven Nat. Lab. (USA) and at the EPS HEP 2007 Conference, Manchester (UK)

Apparently universal trends have been observed in relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions up to RHIC energies. Here, we review these trends and we discuss their agnostic extrapolation to heavy ion collisions at the LHC., Comment: 37 pages, 6 figures; invited topical review for Journal of Physics G

Particle correlations are very actively studied in heavy-ion collisions at ultra-relativistic energies. Here, an attempt is made at determining a proper reference for such studies, by taking properly into account the multiparticle correlations induced by the conservation of total momentum in the collisions., Comment: 9 pages, talk given at the workshop "High-pT physics at LHC", March 23-27, 2007, Jyvaskyla, Finland. v2: final version

We study high-energy proton-nucleus collisions within the Colour Glass Condensate framework, and compute the probabilities of having a definite number of scatterings in the nucleus with a momentum transfer larger than a given cut. Various properties of the distribution in the number of multiple scatterings are investigated, and we conclude that events with monojets are very unlikely, except for extreme values of the saturation scale Qs., Comment: 4 pages, 4 eps-figures. Talk given at Quark Matter 2006, Shanghai, 14-20 Nov. 2006

Global transverse-momentum conservation induces correlations between any number of particles, which contribute in particular to the two- and three-particle correlations measured in heavy-ion collisions. These correlations are examined in detail, and their importance for studies of jets and their interaction with the medium is discussed., Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures. v2: corrected typos and added a paragraph

The explanation of the suppression of high-pT hadron yields at RHIC in terms of jet-quenching implies that the multiplicity distributions of particles inside a jet and jet-like particle correlations differ strongly in nucleus-nucleus collisions at RHIC or at the LHC from those observed at e+e- or hadron colliders. We present a framework for describing the medium-induced modification, which has a direct interpretation in terms of a probabilistic medium-modified parton cascade, and which treats leading and subleading partons on an equal footing. We show that our approach can account for the strong suppression of single inclusive hadron spectra measured in Au-Au collisions at RHIC, and that this implies a characteristic distortion of the single inclusive distribution of soft partons inside the jet. We determine, as a function of the jet energy, to what extent the soft fragments within a jet can be measured above some momentum cut., Comment: 5 pages, 4 eps-figures; talk given at Hot Quarks 2006, Villasimius (Sardinia, Italy), May 15-20, 2006

We consider proton-nucleus collisions at high energy in the Color Glass Condensate framework, and extract from the gluon production cross-section the probabilities of having a definite number of multiple scatterings in the nucleus. Various properties of the distribution of the number of multiple scatterings are studied, and we conclude that events in which the momentum of a hard jet is compensated by many much softer particles on the opposite side are very unlikely except for extreme values of the saturation momentum. In the same framework, we also investigate the possibility to estimate the impact parameter of a proton-nucleus collision, from the measure of the multiplicity of its final state., Comment: 22 pages, 8 figures, version to appear in PRD

The "jet-quenching" interpretation of suppressed high-pT hadron production at RHIC implies that jet multiplicity distributions and jet-like particle correlations in heavy-ion collisions at RHIC and LHC differ strongly from those seen at e+e- or pp colliders. Here, we present an approach for describing the changes induced by the medium, which implements jet quenching as a probabilistic medium-modified parton shower, treating leading and subleading parton splittings on an equal footing. We show that the strong suppression of single inclusive hadron spectra measured in Au-Au collisions at RHIC implies a characteristic distortion of the single inclusive distribution of soft partons inside the jet. We determine, as a function of jet energy, to what extent the soft jet fragments can be measured above some momentum cut., Comment: 4 pages, 2 eps-figures. Talk given at Quark Matter 2005, Budapest, 4-9 Aug 2005

The large elliptic flow observed in Au-Au collisions at RHIC is often put forward as a compelling evidence for the formation of a strongly-interacting quark-gluon plasma. The main argument is that the measured elliptic flow is as large as the value given by fluid-dynamics models that assume complete thermalization. It is argued that this claim may not be justified, since a detailed examination of experimental data rather suggests that the system created is not fully equilibrated at the time when anisotropic flow develops., Comment: 8 pages, 2 eps-figures, Talk given at the Workshop on QGP Thermalization (QGPTH05), Vienna, 10-12 Aug 2005

The hump-backed plateau of the single inclusive distribution of hadrons inside a jet provides a standard test of the interplay between probabilistic parton splitting and quantum coherence in QCD. The medium-induced modification of this QCD radiation physics is expected to give access to the properties of the dense medium produced in relativistic heavy ion collisions. Here, we introduce a formulation of medium-induced parton energy loss, which treats all leading and subleading parton branchings equally, and which - for showering in the vacuum - accounts for the observed distribution of soft jet fragments. We show that the strong suppression of single inclusive hadron spectra measured in Au-Au collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) implies a characteristic distortion of the hump-backed plateau; we determine, as a function of jet energy, to what extent the soft jet fragments can be measured above some momentum cut. Our study further indicates that the approximate pT-independence of the measured nuclear modification factor does not exclude a significant Q^2-dependence of parton energy loss., Comment: 4 pages RevTex, 3 eps-figures

A unified framework for describing the azimuthal dependence of two-particle correlations in heavy-ion collisions is introduced, together with the methods for measuring the corresponding observables. The generalization to azimuthal correlations between more than two particles is presented., Comment: 7 pages; talk given at Hot Quarks 2004, Taos (NM), July 18-24,2004

Using a generating-function formalism, we compute the contribution of momentum conservation to multiparticle correlations between the emitted particles in high-energy collisions. In particular, we derive a compact expression of the genuine M-particle correlation, for arbitrary M., Comment: 5 pages, RevTeX. v2: typos corrected, to match journal version

We discuss signatures of thermalisation in heavy ion collisions based on elliptic flow. We then propose a new method to analyse elliptic flow, based on multiparticle azimuthal correlations. This method allows one to test quantitatively the collective behaviour of the interacting system., Comment: 6 pages, talk given at XXXI International Symposium on Multiparticle Dynamics, Sept 1-7, 2001, Datong China. URL http://ismd31.ccnu.edu.cn/

We have recently proposed a new method of flow analysis, based on a cumulant expansion of multiparticle azimuthal correlations. Here, we describe the practical implementation of the method. The major improvement over traditional methods is that the cumulant expansion eliminates order by order correlations not due to flow, which are often large but usually neglected., Comment: 6 pages revtex. Proceedings of the International Workshop on the Physics of the Quark-Gluon Plasma, Palaiseau, France, 4-7 Sept. 01

The restrictions imposed by anomaly cancellation on the chiral fermion content of nonsupersymmetric gauge theories based on various groups are studied in spacetime dimension D=6, 8, and 10. In particular, we show that the only mathematically consistent chiral SU(5) theory in D=6 contains three nonidentical generations., Comment: 15 pages, revtex. v2: references added to match published version

We present a new method for analyzing directed and elliptic flow in heavy ion collisions. Unlike standard methods, it separates the contribution of flow to azimuthal correlations from contributions due to other effects. The separation relies on a cumulant expansion of multiparticle azimuthal correlations, and includes corrections for detector inefficiencies. This new method allows the measurement of the flow of identified particles in narrow phase-space regions, and can be used in every regime, from intermediate to ultrarelativistic energies., Comment: 31 pages, revtex. Published version (references added)

The measurement of azimuthal distributions in nucleus-nucleus collisions relies upon the assumption that azimuthal correlations between particles result solely from their correlation with the reaction plane (i.e. flow). We show that at SPS energies, the ansatz is no longer valid, and two-particle correlations due to momentum conservation, final state interactions or resonance decays become of the same order as those arising from flow. This leads us to introduce new methods to analyse collective flow, based on a cumulant expansion, which enable to extract smaller values than those accessible to the standard analysis., Comment: 6 pages, no figure; Proceedings of the XXX International Symposium on Multiparticle Dynamics (ISMD 2000), Tihany (Hungary), October 9-15, 2000

The methods currently used to measure azimuthal distributions of particles in heavy ion collisions assume that all azimuthal correlations between particles result from their correlation with the reaction plane. However, other correlations exist, and it is safe to neglect them only if azimuthal anisotropies are much larger than 1/sqrt(N), with N the total number of particles emitted in the collision. This condition is not satisfied at ultrarelativistic energies. We propose a new method, based on a cumulant expansion of multiparticle azimuthal correlations, which allows to measure much smaller values of azimuthal anisotropies, down to 1/N. It is simple to implement and can be used to measure both integrated and differential flow. Furthermore, this method automatically eliminates the major systematic errors, which are due to azimuthal asymmetries in the detector acceptance., Comment: final version (misprints corrected), to be published in Phys.Rev.C

Several heavy ion experiments at SPS have measured azimuthal distributions of particles with respect to the reaction plane. These distributions are deduced from two-particle azimuthal correlations under the assumption that they result solely from correlations with the reaction plane. In this paper, we investigate other sources of azimuthal correlations: transverse momentum conservation, which produces back-to-back correlations, resonance decays, HBT correlations and final state interactions. These correlations increase with impact parameter: most of them vary with the multiplicity N like 1/N. When they are taken into account, the experimental results of the NA49 collaboration at SPS are significantly modified. These correlations might also explain an important fraction of the pion directed flow observed by WA98. Data should be reanalyzed taking into account carefully these non--flow correlations., Comment: Revised version (minor corrections), 13 pages, LaTeX, 6 Postscript figures included. Submitted to Physical Review C

The methods currently used to measure collective flow in nucleus--nucleus collisions assume that the only azimuthal correlations between particles are those arising from their correlation with the reaction plane. However, quantum HBT correlations also produce short range azimuthal correlations between identical particles. This creates apparent azimuthal anisotropies of a few percent when pions are used to estimate the direction of the reaction plane. These should not be misinterpreted as originating from collective flow. In particular, we show that the peculiar behaviour of the directed and elliptic flow of pions observed by NA49 at low p_T can be entirely understood in terms of HBT correlations. Such correlations also produce apparent higher Fourier harmonics (of order n larger than 3) of the azimuthal distribution, with magnitudes of the order of 1%, which should be looked for in the data., Comment: Revised Version, 7 pages, Latex, 6 Postscript figures included. Submitted to Physics Letters B