We study the kinetic and chemical equilibration in infinite parton-hadron matter within the Parton-Hadron-String Dynamics transport approach, which is based on a dynamical quasiparticle model for partons matched to reproduce lattice-QCD results - including the partonic equation of state - in thermodynamic equilibrium. The infinite matter is simulated within a cubic box with periodic boundary conditions initialized at different baryon density (or chemical potential) and energy density. The transition from initially pure partonic matter to hadronic degrees of freedom (or vice versa) occurs dynamically by interactions. Different thermodynamical distributions of the strongly-interacting quark-gluon plasma (sQGP) are addressed and discussed.
In this study we investigate the dynamics of strongly interacting parton-hadron matter by calculating the centrality dependence of direct photons produced in Au+Au collisions at $sqrt{s_{NN}}=200$ GeV within the Parton-Hadron-String Dynamics (PHSD) transport approach. As sources for direct photons, we incorporate the interactions of quarks and gluons as well as hadronic interactions ($pi+pitorho+gamma$, $rho+pitopi+gamma$, meson-meson bremsstrahlung $m+mto m+m+gamma$, meson-baryon bremsstrahlung $m+Bto m+B+gamma$), the decays of $phi$ and $a_1$ mesons and the photons produced in the initial hard collisions (pQCD). Our calculations suggest that the channel decomposition of the observed spectrum changes with centrality with an increasing (dominant) contribution of hadronic sources for more peripheral reactions. Furthermore, the thermal photon yield is found to scale roughly with the number of participant nucleons as $N_{part}^alpha$ with $alpha approx$ 1.5, whereas the partonic contribution scales with an exponent $alpha_p approx1.75$. Additionally, we provide predictions for the centrality dependence of the direct photon elliptic flow $v_2(p_T)$. The direct photon $v_2$ is seen to be larger in peripheral collisions compared to the most central ones since the photons from the hot deconfined matter in the early stages of the collision carry a much smaller elliptic flow than those from the final hadronic interactions.
This talk is devoted to review the field of strangeness production in (ultra-)relativistic heavy ion collisions within our present theoretical understanding. Historically there have been (at least) three major ideas for the interest in the production of strange hadronic particles: (1) mass modification of the kaons in a (baryon-)dense environment; (2) (early) K+ - production probes the nuclear equation of state (EoS); (3) enhanced strangeness production especially in the (multi-)strange (anti-)baryon channels as a signal of quark gluon plasma (QGP) formation. As a guideline for the discussion I employ the extensive experience with microscopic hadronic transport models. In addition, I elaborate on the recent idea of antihyperon production solely by means of multi-mesonic fusion-type reactions.
The thermodynamic geometry formalism is applied to strongly interacting matter to estimate the deconfinement temperature. The curved thermodynamic metric for Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) is evaluated on the basis of lattice data, whereas the hadron resonance gas model is used for the hadronic sector. Since the deconfinement transition is a crossover, the geometric criterion used to define the mbox{(pseudo-)critical} temperature, as a function of the baryonchemical potential $mu_B$, is $R(T,mu_B)=0$, where $R$ is the scalar curvature. The (pseudo-)critical temperature, $T_c$, resulting from QCD thermodynamic geometry is in good agreement with lattice and phenomenological freeze-out temperature estimates. The crossing temperature, $T_h$, evaluated by the hadron resonance gas, which suffers of some model dependence, is larger than $T_c$ (about $20%$) signaling remnants of confinement above the transition.
Ultrarelativistic collisions between heavy nuclei briefly generate the quark-gluon plasma (QGP), a new state of matter characterized by deconfined partons last seen microseconds after the Big Bang. The properties of the QGP are of intense interest, and a large community has developed over several decades, to produce, measure and understand this primordial plasma. The plasma is now recognized to be a strongly-coupled fluid with remarkable properties, and hydrodynamics is commonly used to quantify and model the system. An important feature of any fluid is its vorticity, related to the local angular momentum density; however, this degree of freedom has received relatively little attention because no experimental signals of vorticity had been detected. Thanks to recent high-statistics datasets from experiments with precision tracking and complete kinemetic coverage at collider energies, hyperon spin polarization measurements have begun to uncover the vorticity of the QGP created at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. The injection of this new degree of freedom into a relatively mature field of research represents an enormous opportunity to generate new insights into the physics of the QGP. The community has responded with enthusiasm, and this book (to be published as a volume of Lecture Notes in Physics series by Springer) represents some of the diverse lines of inquiry into aspects of strongly interacting matter under rotation.
The correlation between baryon number and strangeness elucidates the nature of strongly interacting matter, such as that formed transiently in high-energy nuclear collisions. This diagnostic can be extracted theoretically from lattice QCD calculations and experimentally from event-by-event fluctuations. The analysis of present lattice results above the critical temperature severely limits the presence of q-qbar bound states, thus supporting a picture of independent (quasi)quarks.