The relaxation times over which dissipative fluxes restore their steady state values have been evaluated for a pion gas using the 14-moment method. The effect of the medium has been implemented through a temperature dependent pi-pi cross-section in the collision integral which is obtained by including one-loop self-energies in the propagators of the exchanged rho and sigma mesons. To account for chemical freeze out in heavy ion collisions, a temperature dependent pion chemical potential has been introduced in the distribution function. The temperature dependence of the relaxation times for shear and bulk viscous flows as well as the heat flow is significantly affected.
The electrical and Hall conductivities in a uniform magnetic field are evaluated for an interacting pion gas using the kinetic theory approach within the ambit of relaxation time approximation (RTA). The in-medium cross sections vis-a-vis the relaxation time for $pipi$ scattering are obtained using a one-loop modified thermal propagator for the exchanged $rho$ and $sigma$ mesons using thermal field theoretic techniques. For higher values of the magnetic field, a monotonic increase of the electrical conductivity with the temperature is observed. However, for a given temperature the conductivity is found to decrease steadily with magnetic field. The Hall conductivity, at lower values of the magnetic field, is found to decrease with temperature more rapidly than the electrical conductivity, whereas at higher values of the magnetic field, a linear increase is seen. Use of the in-medium scattering cross-section is found to produce a significant effect on the temperature dependence of both electrical and Hall conductivities compared to the case where vacuum cross-section is used.
The pion properties in symmetric nuclear matter are investigated with the Quark-Meson Coupling (QMC) Model plus the light-front constituent quark model~(LFCQM). The LFCQM has been quite successful in describing the properties of pseudoscalar mesons in vacuum, such as the electromagnetic elastic form factors, electromagnetic radii, and decay constants. We study the pion properties in symmetric nuclear matter with the in-medium input recalculated through the QMC model, which provides the in-medium modification of the LFCQM.
The concept of the Wigner function is used to construct a semi-classical kinetic theory describing the evolution of the axial-current phase-space density of spin-1/2 particles in the relaxation time approximation. The resulting approach can be used to study spin-polarization effects in relativistic matter, in particular, in heavy-ion collisions. An expression for the axial current based on the classical treatment of spin is also introduced and we show that it is consistent with earlier calculations using Wigner functions. Finally, we derive non-equilibrium corrections to the spin tensor, which are used to define, for the first time, the structure of spin transport coefficients in relativistic matter.
Hadronization of heavy quarks reveals various unusual features. Gluon radiation by a heavy quark originated from a hard process, ceases shortly on a distance of the order of few fm. Due to the dead-cone effect a heavy quark radiates only a small fraction of its energy. This is why the measured fragmentation function D(z) peaks at large z. Hadronization finishes at very short distances, well shorter than 1 fm, by production of a colorless small-size Qq-bar dipole. This ensures dominance of a perturbative mechanism and makes possible factorization of short and long distances. The latter corresponds to final state interactions of the produced dipole propagating through a dense medium. The results provide good description of data on beauty and charm suppression in heavy ion collisions, fixing the transport coefficient for b-quarks about twice smaller than for charm, and both significantly lower that the values determined from data on suppression of high-pT light hadrons. We relate this to reduction of the QCD coupling at higher scales, and suppression of radiation by the dead-cone effect.
Motivated by the theory of relativistic hydrodynamic fluctuations we make use of the Green-Kubo formula to compute the electrical conductivity and the (second-order) relaxation time of the electric current of an interacting hadron gas. We use the recently developed transport code SMASH to numerically solve the coupled set of Boltzmann equations implementing realistic hadronic interactions. In particular, we explore the role of the resonance lifetimes in the determination of the electrical relaxation time. As opposed to a previous calculation of the shear viscosity we observe that the presence of resonances with lifetimes of the order of the mean-free time does not appreciably affect the relaxation of the electric current fluctuations. We compare our results to other approaches describing similar systems, and provide the value of the electrical conductivity and the relaxation time for a hadron gas at temperatures between T=60 MeV and T=150 MeV.