The evolution and production of strangeness from chemically equilibrating and transversely expanding quark gluon plasma which may be formed in the wake of relativistic heavy ion collisions is studied with initial conditions obtained from the Self Screened Parton Cascade (SSPC) model. The extent of partonic equilibration increases almost linearly with the square of the initial energy density, which can then be scaled with number of participants.
Brief review of the hadronic probes that are used to diagnose the quark-gluon plasma produced in relativistic heavy ion collisions and interrogate its properties. Emphasis is placed on probes that have significantly impacted our understanding of the nature of the quark-gluon plasma and confirmed its formation.
We study the evolution of the quark-gluon composition of the plasma created in ultra-Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions (uRHICs) employing a partonic transport theory that includes both elastic and inelastic collisions plus a mean fields dynamics associated to the widely used quasi-particle model. The latter, able to describe lattice QCD thermodynamics, implies a chemical equilibrium ratio between quarks and gluons strongly increasing as $Trightarrow T_c$, the phase transition temperature. Accordingly we see in realistic simulations of uRHICs a rapid evolution from a gluon dominated initial state to a quark dominated plasma close to $T_c$. The quark to gluon ratio can be modified by about a factor of $sim 20$ in the bulk of the system and appears to be large also in the high $p_T$ region. We discuss how this aspect, often overflown, can be important for a quantitative study of several key issues in the QGP physics: shear viscosity, jet quenching, quarkonia suppression. Furthermore a bulk plasma made by more than $80%$ of quarks plus antiquarks provides a theoretical basis for hadronization via quark coalescence.
We study charm production in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions by using the Parton-Hadron-String Dynamics (PHSD) transport approach. The initial charm quarks are produced by the Pythia event generator tuned to fit the transverse momentum spectrum and rapidity distribution of charm quarks from Fixed-Order Next-to-Leading Logarithm (FONLL) calculations. The produced charm quarks scatter in the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) with the off-shell partons whose masses and widths are given by the Dynamical Quasi-Particle Model (DQPM) which reproduces the lattice QCD equation-of-state in thermal equilibrium. The relevant cross section are calculated in a consistent way by employing the effective propagators and couplings from the DQPM. Close to the critical energy density of the phase transition, the charm quarks are hadronized into $D$ mesons through coalescence and/or fragmentation depending on transverse momentum. The hadronized $D$ mesons then interact with the various hadrons in the hadronic phase with cross sections calculated in an effective lagrangian approach with heavy-quark spin symmetry. Finally, the nuclear modification factor $rm R_{AA}$ and the elliptic flow $v_2$ of $D^0$ mesons from PHSD are compared with the experimental data from the STAR Collaboration for Au+Au collisions at $sqrt{s_{rm NN}}$ =200 GeV. We find that in the PHSD the energy loss of $D$ mesons at high $p_T$ can be dominantly attributed to partonic scattering while the actual shape of $rm R_{AA}$ versus $p_T$ reflects the heavy quark hadronization scenario, i.e. coalescence versus fragmentation. Also the hadronic rescattering is important for the $rm R_{AA}$ at low $p_T$ and enhances the $D$-meson elliptic flow $v_2$.
One of the primary goals of nuclear physics is studying the phase diagram of Quantum Chromodynamics, where a hypothetical critical point serves as a landmark. A systematic model-data comparison of heavy-ion collisions at center-of-mass energies between 1 and 100 GeV per nucleon is essential for locating the critical point and the phase boundary between the deconfined quark-gluon plasma and the confined hadron resonance gas. At these energies the net baryon density of the system can be high and critical fluctuations can become essential in the presence of the critical point. Simulating their dynamical evolution thus becomes an indispensable part of theoretical modeling. In this thesis we first present the (3+1)-dimensional relativistic hydrodynamic code BEShydro, which solves the equations of motion of second-order Denicol-Niemi-Molnar-Rischke theory, including bulk and shear viscous components as well as baryon diffusion current. We then study the effects caused by the baryon diffusion on the longitudinal dynamics and on the phase diagram trajectories of fluid cells at different space-time rapidities of the system, and how they are affected by critical dynamics near the critical point. We finally explore the evolution of non-hydrodynamic slow processes describing long wavelength critical fluctuations near the critical point, by extending the conventional hydrodynamic description by coupling it to additional explicitly evolving slow modes, and their back-reaction to the bulk matter properties.