No Arabic abstract
Based on the fact that the mass difference between the chiral partners is an order parameter of chiral phase transition and that the chiral order parameter reduces substantially at the chemical freeze-out point in ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions, we argue that the production ratio of $K_1$ over $K^*$ in such collisions should be substantially larger than that predicted in the statistical hadronization model. We further show that while the enhancement effect might be contaminated by the relatively larger decrease of $K_1$ meson than $K^*$ meson during the hadronic phase, the signal will be visible through a systematic study on centrality as the kinetic freeze-out temperature is higher and the hadronic life time shorter in peripheral collisions than in central collisions.
The Chiral Magnetic Effect (CME) is a remarkable phenomenon that stems from highly nontrivial interplay of QCD chiral symmetry, axial anomaly, and gluonic topology. It is of fundamental importance to search for the CME in experiments. The heavy ion collisions provide a unique environment where a hot chiral-symmetric quark-gluon plasma is created, gluonic topological fluctuations generate chirality imbalance, and very strong magnetic fields $|vec{bf B}|sim m_pi^2$ are present during the early stage of such collisions. Significant efforts have been made to look for CME signals in heavy ion collision experiments. In this contribution we give a brief overview on the status of such efforts.
We study the $K^*$ meson reduction in heavy ion collisions by focusing on the hadronic effects on the $K^*$ meson abundance. We evaluate the absorption cross sections of the $K^*$ and $K$ meson by light mesons in the hadronic matter, and further investigate the variation in the meson abundances for both particles during the hadronic stage of heavy ion collisions. We show how the interplay between the interaction of the $K^*$ meson and kaon with light mesons in the hadronic medium determines the final yield difference of the statistical hadronization model to the experimental measurements. For the central Au+Au collision at $sqrt{s_{NN}}=200$ GeV, we find that the $K^*/K$ yield ratio at chemical freeze-out decreases by $36%$ during the expansion of the hadronic matter, resulting in the final ratio comparable to STAR measurements of 0.23 $pm0.05$.
Relativistic heavy-ion collisions create hot quark-gluon plasma as well as very strong electromagnetic (EM) and fluid vortical fields. The strong EM field and vorticity can induce intriguing macroscopic quantum phenomena such as chiral magnetic, chiral separation, chiral electric separation, and chiral vortical effects as well as the spin polarization of hadrons. These phenomena provide us with experimentally feasible means to study the nontrivial topological sector of quantum chromodynamics, the possible parity violation of strong interaction at high temperature, and the subatomic spintronics of quark-gluon plasma. These studies, both in theory and in experiments, are strongly connected with other subfields of physics such as condensed matter physics, astrophysics, and cold atomic physics, and thus form an emerging interdisciplinary research area. We give an introduction to the aforementioned phenomena induced by the EM field and vorticity and an overview of the current status of their experimental research in heavy-ion collisions. We also briefly discuss spin hydrodynamics as well as chiral and spin kinetic theories.
We study the production of strange hadrons in nucleus-nucleus collisions from 4 to 160 A GeV within the Parton-Hadron-String Dynamics (PHSD) transport approach that is extended to incorporate essentials aspects of chiral symmetry restoration (CSR) in the hadronic sector (via the Schwinger mechanism) on top of the deconfinement phase transition as implemented in PHSD. Especially the $K^+/pi^+$ and the $(Lambda+Sigma^0)/pi^-$ ratios in central Au+Au collisions are found to provide information on the relative importance of both transitions. The modelling of chiral symmetry restoration is driven by the pion-nucleon $Sigma$-term in the computation of the quark scalar condensate $<q {bar q}>$ that serves as an order parameter for CSR and also scales approximately with the effective quark masses $m_s$ and $m_q$. Furthermore, the nucleon scalar density $rho_s$, which also enters the computation of $<q {bar q}>$, is evaluated within the nonlinear $sigma-omega$ model which is constraint by Dirac-Brueckner calculations and low energy heavy-ion reactions. The Schwinger mechanism (for string decay) fixes the ratio of strange to light quark production in the hadronic medium. We find that above $sim$80 A GeV the reaction dynamics of heavy nuclei is dominantly driven by partonic degrees-of-freedom such that traces of the chiral symmetry restoration are hard to identify. Our studies support the conjecture of quarkyonic matter in heavy-ion collisions from about 5 to 40 A GeV and provide a microscopic explanation for the maximum in the $K^+/pi^+$ ratio at about 30 A GeV which only shows up if a transition to partonic degrees-of-freedom is incorporated in the reaction dynamics and is discarded in the traditional hadron-string models.
The beam energy dependence of the elliptic flow,$v_2$, is studied in mid-central Au+Au collisions in the energy range of $3leq sqrt{s_{NN}} leq 30$ GeV within the microscopic transport model JAM. The results of three different modes of JAM are compared; cascade-,hadronic mean field-, and a new mode with modified equations of state, with a first order phase transition (1.O.P.T.) and with a crossover transition. The standard hadronic mean field suppresses $v_2$, while the inclusion of the effects of a 1.O.P.T. (and also of a crossover transition) does enhance $v_2$ at $sqrt{s_{NN}}<30$ GeV. The enhancement or suppression of the scaled energy flow, dubbed elliptic flowis understood as being due to out of plane- flow, i.e. $v_2<0$, dubbed out of plane - squeeze-out, which occurs predominantly in the early, compression stage. Subsequently, the in-plane flow dominates, in the expansion stage, $v_2 > 0$. The directed flow, dubbed bounce- off, is an independent measure of the pressure, which quickly builds up the transverse momentum transfer in the reaction plane. When the spectator matter leaves the participant fireball region, where the highest compression occurs, a hard expansion leads to larger $v_2$. A combined analysis of the three transverse flow coefficients, radial $v_0$-, directed $v_1$- and elliptic $v_2$- flow, in the beam energy range of $3leqsqrt{s_{NN}}leq10$ GeV, distinguishes the different compression and expansion scenarios: a characteristic dependence on the early stage equation of state is observed. The enhancement of both the elliptic and the transverse radial flow and the simultaneous collapse of the directed flow of nucleons offers a clear signature if 1.O.P.T. is realized at the highest baryon densities created in high energy heavy-ion collisions.