No Arabic abstract
We consider the SU(2) Glasma with gaussian fluctuations and study its evolution by means of classical Yang-Mills equations solved numerically on a lattice. Neglecting in this first study the longitudinal expansion we follow the evolution of the pressures of the system and compute the effect of the fluctuations in the early stage up to $tapprox 2$ fm/c, that is the time range in which the Glasma is relevant for high energy collisions. We measure the ratio of the longitudinal over the transverse pressure, $P_L/P_T$, and we find that unless the fluctuations carry a substantial amount of the energy density at the initial time, they do not change significantly the evolution of $P_L/P_T$ in the early stage, and that the system remains quite anisotropic. We also measure the longitudinal fields correlators both in the transverse plane and along the longitudinal direction: while at initial time fields appear to be anticorrelated in the transverse plane, this anticorrelation disappears in the very early stage and the correlation length in the transverse plane increases; on the other hand, we find that the longitudinal correlator decreases for a small longitudinal separation while being approximately constant for larger separation, which we interpret as a partial loss of longitudinal correlation induced by the dynamics.
We discuss the energy flow of the classical gluon fields created in collisions of heavy nuclei at collider energies. We show how the Yang-Mills analoga of Faradays Law and Gauss Law predict the initial gluon flux tubes to expand or bend. The resulting transverse and longitudinal structure of the Poynting vector field has a rich phenomenology. Besides the well known radial and elliptic flow in transverse direction, classical quantum chromodynamics predicts a rapidity-odd transverse flow that tilts the fireball for non-central collisions, and it implies a characteristic flow pattern for collisions of non-symmetric systems $A+B$. The rapidity-odd transverse flow translates into a directed particle flow $v_1$ which has been observed at RHIC and LHC. The global flow fields in heavy ion collisions could be a powerful check for the validity of classical Yang-Mill dynamics in high energy collisions.
In this paper, we give an account of the peripheral-tube model, which has been developed to give an intuitive and dynamical description of the so-called ridge effect in two-particle correlations in high-energy nuclear collisions. Starting from a realistic event-by-event fluctuating hydrodynamical model calculation, we first show the emergence of ridge + shoulders in the so-called two-particle long-range correlations, reproducing the data. In contrast to the commonly used geometric picture of the origin of the anisotropic flow, we can explain such a structure dynamically in terms of the presence of high energy-density peripheral tubes in the initial conditions. These tubes violently explode and deflect the near radial flow coming from the interior of the hot matter, which in turn produces a two-ridge structure in single-particle distribution, with approximately two units opening in azimuth. When computing the two-particle correlation, this will result in characteristic three-ridge structure, with a high near-side ridge and two symmetric lower away-side ridges or shoulders. Several anisotropic flows, necessary to producing ridge + shoulder structure, appear naturally in this dynamical description. Using this simple idea, we can understand several related phenomena, such as centrality dependence and trigger-angle dependence.
In high-energy collisions, massive heavy quarks are produced back-to-back initially and they are sensitive to early dynamical conditions. The strong collective partonic wind from the fast expanding quark-gluon plasma created in high-energy nuclear collisions modifies the correlation pattern significantly. As a result, the angular correlation function for D$bar{rm D}$ pairs is suppressed at the angle $Deltaphi=pi$. While the hot and dense medium in collisions at RHIC ($sqrt{s_{NN}}=200$ GeV) can only smear the initial back-to-back D$bar {rm D}$ correlation, a clear and strong near side D$bar{rm D}$ correlation is expected at LHC ($sqrt{s_{NN}}=5500$ GeV).
We propose to measure azimuthal correlations of heavy-flavor hadrons to address the status of thermalization at the partonic stage of light quarks and gluons in high-energy nuclear collisions. In particular, we show that hadronic interactions at the late stage cannot significantly disturb the initial back-to-back azimuthal correlations of DDbar pairs. Thus, a decrease or the complete absence of these initial correlations does indicate frequent interactions of heavy-flavor quarks and also light partons in the partonic stage, which are essential for the early thermalization of light partons.
In high energy heavy ion collisions at RHIC there are important aspects of the medium induced dynamics, that are still not well understood. In particular, there is a broadening and even a double hump structure of the away-side peak appearing in azimuthal correlation studies in Au+Au collisions which is absent in p+p collisions at the same energies. These features are already present but suppressed in p+p collisions: 2 to 3 parton processes produce such structures but are suppressed with respect to 2 to 2 processes. We argue that in A+A collisions the different geometry for the trajectories of 3 as opposed to 2 particles in the final state, together with the medium induced energy loss effects on the different cross sections, create a scenario that enhances processes with 3 particles in the final state, which gives on average this double hump structure.