No Arabic abstract
Several transport models have been employed in recent years to analyze heavy-flavor meson spectra in high-energy heavy-ion collisions. Heavy-quark transport coefficients extracted from these models with their default parameters vary, however, by up to a factor of 5 at high momenta. To investigate the origin of this large theoretical uncertainty, a systematic comparison of heavy-quark transport coefficients is carried out between various transport models. Within a common scheme devised for the nuclear modification factor of charm quarks in a brick medium of a quark-gluon plasma, the systematic uncertainty of the extracted drag coefficient among these models is shown to be reduced to a factor of 2, which can be viewed as the smallest intrinsic systematical error band achievable at present time. This indicates the importance of a realistic hydrodynamic evolution constrained by bulk hadron spectra and of heavy-quark hadronization for understanding the final heavy-flavor hadron spectra and extracting heavy-quark drag coefficient. The transverse transport coefficient is less constrained due to the influence of the underlying mechanism for heavy-quark medium interaction. Additional constraints on transport models such as energy loss fluctuation and transverse-momentum broadening can further reduce theoretical uncertainties in the extracted transport coefficients.
A Linearized Boltzmann Transport (LBT) model coupled with hydrodynamical background is established to describe the evolution of jet shower partons and medium excitations in high energy heavy-ion collisions. We extend the LBT model to include both elastic and inelastic processes for light and heavy partons in the quark-gluon plasma. A hybrid model of fragmentation and coalescence is developed for the hadronization of heavy quarks. Within this framework, we investigate how heavy flavor observables depend on various ingredients, such as different energy loss and hadronization mechanisms, the momentum and temperature dependences of the transport coefficients, and the radial flow of the expanding fireball. Our model calculations show good descriptions of the $D$ meson suppression and elliptic flow observed at the LHC and RHIC. The prediction for the Pb-Pb collisions at $sqrt{s_mathrm{NN}}$=5.02~TeV is provided.
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.
In this paper we study the real-time evolution of heavy quarkonium in the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) on the basis of the open quantum systems approach. In particular, we shed light on how quantum dissipation affects the dynamics of the relative motion of the quarkonium state over time. To this end we present a novel non-equilibrium master equation for the relative motion of quarkonium in a medium, starting from Lindblad operators derived systematically from quantum field theory. In order to implement the corresponding dynamics, we deploy the well established quantum state diffusion method. In turn we reveal how the full quantum evolution can be cast in the form of a stochastic non-linear Schrodinger equation. This for the first time provides a direct link from quantum chromodynamics (QCD) to phenomenological models based on non-linear Schrodinger equations. Proof of principle simulations in one-dimension show that dissipative effects indeed allow the relative motion of the constituent quarks in a quarkonium at rest to thermalize. Dissipation turns out to be relevant already at early times well within the QGP lifetime in relativistic heavy ion collisions.
In this article we investigate how the drag coefficient $A$ and $hat{q}$, the transverse momentum transfer by unit length, of charm quarks are modified if the QGP is not in complete thermal equilibrium using the dynamical quasi-particle model (DQPM) which reproduces both, the equation-of-state of the QGP and the spatial diffusion coefficient of heavy quarks as predicted by lattice QCD calculations. We study three cases: a) the QGP has an anisotropic momentum distribution of the partons which leads to an anisotropic pressure b) the QGP partons have higher or lower kinetic energies as compared to the thermal expectation value, and c) the QGP partons have larger or smaller pole masses of their spectral function as compared to the pole mass from the DQPM at the QGP temperature. In the last two cases we adjust the number density of partons to obtain the same energy density as in an equilibrated QGP. In the first scenario we find that if the transverse pressure exceeds the longitudinal one for small heavy quark momenta $A$ becomes larger and $hat{q}$ smaller as compared to an isotropic pressure. For heavy quarks with large momentum both, $A$ and $hat{q}$ , approach unity. If the partons have less kinetic energy or a smaller pole mass as compared to a system in equilibrium charm quarks lose more energy. In the former case $hat{q}$ decreases whereas in the latter case it increases for charm quark with a low or intermediate transverse momentum. Thus each non-equilibrium scenario affects $A$ and $hat{q}$ of charm quarks in a different way. The modifications in our scenarios are of the order 20-50% at temperatures relevant for heavy ion reactions. These modifications have to be considered if one wants to determine these coefficients by comparing heavy ion data with theoretical predictions from viscous hydrodynamics or Langevin equations.
We calculate transport coefficients of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) within the dynamical quasiparticle model (DQPM) by explicitly computing the parton interaction rates as a function of temperature $T$ and baryon chemical potential $mu_B$ on the basis of the DQPM couplings and partonic propagators. The latter are extracted from lattice QCD by matching the equation of state, entropy density and energy density at $mu_B$= 0. For baryon chemical potentials $0 leq mu_B leq 500 MeV$ we employ a scaling Ansatz for the effective coupling which was shown before to lead to thermodynamic consistent results in this range. We compute the ratio of the shear and bulk viscosities to the entropy density, i.e. $eta/s$ and $zeta/s$, the electric conductivity $sigma_0/T$ as well as the baryon diffusion coefficient $kappa_B$ and compare to related approaches from the literature. We find that the ratios $eta/s$ and $zeta/s$ as well as $sigma_0/T$ are in accord with the results from lattice QCD at $mu_B$=0 and only weakly depend on the ratio $T/T_c(mu_B)$ where $T_c(mu_B)$ denotes the critical temperature at finite baryon chemical potential.