No Arabic abstract
We study the properties of the strongly-coupled quark-gluon plasma with a multistage model of heavy ion collisions that combines the T$_mathrm{R}$ENTo initial condition ansatz, free-streaming, viscous relativistic hydrodynamics, and a relativistic hadronic transport. A model-to-data comparison with Bayesian inference is performed, revisiting assumptions made in previous studies. The role of parameter priors is studied in light of their importance towards the interpretation of results. We emphasize the use of closure tests to perform extensive validation of the analysis workflow before comparison with observations. Our study combines measurements from the Large Hadron Collider and the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, achieving a good simultaneous description of a wide range of hadronic observables from both colliders. The selected experimental data provide reasonable constraints on the shear and the bulk viscosities of the quark-gluon plasma at $Tsim$ 150-250 MeV, but their constraining power degrades at higher temperatures $T gtrsim 250$ MeV. Furthermore, these viscosity constraints are found to depend significantly on how viscous corrections are handled in the transition from hydrodynamics to the hadronic transport. Several other model parameters, including the free-streaming time, show similar model sensitivity while the initial condition parameters associated with the T$_mathrm{R}$ENTo ansatz are quite robust against variations of the particlization prescription. We also report on the sensitivity of individual observables to the various model parameters. Finally, Bayesian model selection is used to quantitatively compare the agreement with measurements for different sets of model assumptions, including different particlization models and different choices for which parameters are allowed to vary between RHIC and LHC energies.
Using combined data from the Relativistic Heavy Ion and Large Hadron Colliders, we constrain the shear and bulk viscosities of quark-gluon plasma (QGP) at temperatures of ${sim,}150{-}350$ MeV. We use Bayesian inference to translate experimental and theoretical uncertainties into probabilistic constraints for the viscosities. With Bayesian Model Averaging we account for the irreducible model ambiguities in the transition from a fluid description of the QGP to hadronic transport in the final evolution stage, providing the most reliable phenomenological constraints to date on the QGP viscosities.
Multistage models based on relativistic viscous hydrodynamics have proven successful in describing hadron measurements from relativistic nuclear collisions. These measurements are sensitive to the shear and the bulk viscosities of QCD and provide a unique opportunity to constrain these transport coefficients. Bayesian analyses can be used to obtain systematic constraints on the viscosities of QCD, through methodical model-to-data comparisons. In this manuscript, we discuss recent developments in Bayesian analyses of heavy ion collision data. We highlight the essential role of closure tests in validating a Bayesian analysis before comparison with measurements. We discuss the role of the emulator that is used as proxy for the multistage theoretical model. We use an ongoing Bayesian analysis of soft hadron measurements by the JETSCAPE Collaboration as context for the discussion.
Fireballs created in relativistic heavy-ion collisions at different beam energies have been argued to follow different trajectories in the QCD phase diagram in which the QCD critical point serves as a landmark. Using a (1+1)-dimensional model setting with transverse homogeneity, we study the complexities introduced by the fact that the evolution history of each fireball cannot be characterized by a single trajectory but rather covers an entire swath of the phase diagram, with the finally emitted hadron spectra integrating over contributions from many different trajectories. Studying the phase diagram trajectories of fluid cells at different space-time rapidities, we explore how baryon diffusion shuffles them around, and how they are affected by critical dynamics near the QCD critical point. We find a striking insensitivity of baryon diffusion to critical effects. Its origins are analyzed and possible implications discussed.
A thermal gradient and/or a chemical potential gradient in a conducting medium can lead to an electric field, an effect known as thermoelectric effect or Seebeck effect. In the context of heavy-ion collisions, we estimate the thermoelectric transport coefficients for quark matter within the ambit of the Nambu-Jona Lasinio (NJL) model. We estimate the thermal conductivity, electrical conductivity, and the Seebeck coefficient of hot and dense quark matter. These coefficients are calculated using the relativistic Boltzmann transport equation within relaxation time approximation. The relaxation times for the quarks are estimated from the quark-quark and quark-antiquark scattering through in-medium meson exchange within the NJL model.
We report on broadly based systematic investigations of the modeling components for open heavy-flavor diffusion and energy loss in strongly interacting matter in their application to heavy-flavor observables in high-energy heavy-ion collisions, conducted within an EMMI Rapid Reaction Task Force framework. Initial spectra including cold-nuclear-matter effects, a wide variety of space-time evolution models, heavy-flavor transport coefficients, and hadronization mechanisms are scrutinized in an effort to quantify pertinent uncertainties in the calculations of nuclear modification factors and elliptic flow of open heavy-flavor particles in nuclear collisions. We develop procedures for error assessments and criteria for common model components to improve quantitative estimates for the (low-momentum) heavy-flavor diffusion coefficient as a long-wavelength characteristic of QCD matter as a function of temperature, and for energy loss coefficients of high-momentum heavy-flavor particles.