No Arabic abstract
We discuss the possibility to probe the QCD critical point during the dynamical black hole formation from a gravitational collapse of a massive star, where the temperature and the baryon chemical potential become as high as T ~ 90 MeV and $mu_B$ ~ 1300 MeV. Comparison with the phase boundary in chiral effective models suggests that quark matter is likely to be formed before the horizon is formed. Furthermore, the QCD critical point may be probed during the black hole formation. The critical point is found to move in the lower temperature direction in asymmetric nuclear matter, and in some of the chiral models it is found to be in the reachable region during the black hole formation processes.
We discuss the QCD phase diagram from two different point of view. We first investigate the phase diagram structure in the strong coupling lattice QCD with Polyakov loop effects, and show that the the chiral and Z_{N_c} deconfinement transition boundaries deviate at finite mu as suggested from large N_c arguments. Next we discuss the possibility to probe the QCD critical point during prompt black hole formation processes. The thermodynamical evolution during the black hole formation would result in quark matter formation, and the critical point in isospin asymmetric matter may be swept. (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 Monte-Carlo simulations and chiral effective models.
Strongly interacting matter undergoes a crossover phase transition at high temperatures $Tsim 10^{12}$ K and zero net-baryon density. A fundamental question in the theory of strong interactions, Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), is whether a hot and dense system of quarks and gluons displays critical phenomena when doped with more quarks than antiquarks, where net-baryon number fluctuations diverge. Recent lattice QCD work indicates that such a critical point can only occur in the baryon dense regime of the theory, which defies a description from first principles calculations. Here we use the holographic gauge/gravity correspondence to map the fluctuations of baryon charge in the dense quark-gluon liquid onto a numerically tractable gravitational problem involving the charge fluctuations of holographic black holes. This approach quantitatively reproduces ab initio results for the lowest order moments of the baryon fluctuations and makes predictions for the higher order baryon susceptibilities and also for the location of the critical point, which is found to be within the reach of heavy ion collision experiments.
The expression for the dynamical spectral structure of the density fluctuation near the QCD critical point has been derived using linear response theory within the purview of Israel-Stewart relativistic viscous hydrodynamics. The change in spectral structure of the system as it moves toward critical end point has been studied. The effects of the critical point have been introduced in the system through a realistic equation of state and the scaling behaviour of various transport coefficients and thermodynamic response functions. We have found that the Brillouin and the Rayleigh peaks are distinctly visible when the system is away from critical point but the peaks tend to merge near the critical point. The sensitivity of structure of the spectral function on wave vector ($k$) of the sound wave has been demonstrated. It has been shown that the Brillouin peaks get merged with the Rayleigh peak because of the absorption of sound waves in the vicinity of the critical point.
The evolution of non-hydrodynamic slow processes near the QCD critical point is explored with the novel Hydro+ framework, which extends the conventional hydrodynamic description by coupling it to additional explicitly evolving slow modes describing long wavelength fluctuations. Their slow relaxation is controlled by critical behavior of the correlation length and is independent from gradients of matter density and pressure that control the evolution of the hydrodynamic quantities. In this exploratory study we follow the evolution of the slow modes on top of a simplified QCD matter background, allowing us to clearly distinguish, and study both separately and in combination, the main effects controlling the dynamics of critical slow modes. In particular, we show how the evolution of the slow modes depend on their wave number, the expansion of and advection by the fluid background, and the behavior of the correlation length. Non-equilibrium contributions from the slow modes to bulk matter properties that affect the bulk dynamics (entropy, pressure, temperature and chemical potential) are discussed and found to be small.
We analyze the evolution of hydrodynamic fluctuations in a heavy ion collision as the system passes close to the QCD critical point. We introduce two small dimensionless parameters $lambda$ and $Delta_s$ to characterize the evolution. $lambda$ compares the microscopic relaxation time (away from the critical point) to the expansion rate $lambda equiv tau_0/tau_Q$, and $Delta_s$ compares the baryon to entropy ratio, $n/s$, to its critical value, $Delta_sequiv (n/s - n_c/s_c)/(n_c/s_c)$. We determine how the evolution of critical hydrodynamic fluctuations depends parametrically on $lambda$ and $Delta_s$. Finally, we use this parametric reasoning to estimate the critical fluctuations and correlation length for a heavy ion collision, and to give guidance to the experimental search for the QCD critical point.