In this article, there are 18 sections discussing various current topics in the field of relativistic heavy-ion collisions and related phenomena, which will serve as a snapshot of the current state of the art. Section 1 reviews experimental results
of some recent light-flavored particle production data from ALICE collaboration. Other sections are mostly theoretical in nature. Very strong but transient magnetic field created in relativistic heavy-ion collisions could have important observational consequences. This has generated a lot of theoretical activity in the last decade. Sections 2, 7, 9, 10 and 11 deal with the effects of the magnetic field on the properties of the QCD matter. There are several unanswered questions about the QCD phase diagram. Sections 3, 11 and 18 discuss various aspects of the QCD phase diagram and phase transitions. Recent years have witnessed interesting developments in foundational aspects of hydrodynamics and their application to heavy-ion collisions. Sections 12, 15, 16 and 17 of this article probe some aspects of this exciting field. Transport coefficients together with their temperature- and density-dependence, are essential inputs in hydrodynamical calculations. Sections 5, 8 and 14 deal with calculation/estimation of various transport coefficients (shear and bulk viscosity, thermal conductivity, relaxation times, etc.) of quark matter and hadronic matter. Sections 4, 6 and 13 deals with interesting new developments in the field. Section 4 discusses color dipole gluon distribution function at small transverse momentum in the form of a series of Bells polynomials. Section 6 discusses the properties of Higgs boson in the quark gluon plasma using Higgs-quark interaction. Section 13 discusses modification of coalescence model to incorporate viscous corrections and application of this model.
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 investigate the vacuum structure of dense quark matter in strong magnetic fields at finite temperature and densities in a 3 flavor Nambu Jona Lasinio (NJL) model including the Kobayashi-Maskawa-tHooft (KMT) determinant term using a variational met
hod. The method uses an explicit structure for the `ground state in terms of quark-antiquark condensates as well as diquark condensates. The mass gap equations and the superconducting gap equations are solved self consistently and are used to compute the thermodynamic potential along with the charge neutrality conditions. We also derive the equation of state for the charge neutral strange quark matter in the presence of strong magnetic fields which could be relevant for neutron stars.
We have calculated quark and anti-quark relaxation time by considering different possible elastic and inelastic scatterings in the medium. Comparative role of these elastic and inelastic scatterings on different transport coefficients are explored. T
he quark-meson effective interaction Lagrangian density in the framework of Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model is used for calculating both type of scatterings. Owing to a kinetic threshold, inelastic scatterings can only exist beyond the Mott line in temperature and chemical potential plane, whereas elastic scatterings occur in the entire plane. Interestingly, the strength of inelastic scatterings near and above Mott line becomes so strong that medium behaves like a perfect fluid, in that all transport coefficients become very small.
We compute the transport coefficients, namely, the coefficients of shear and bulk viscosities as well as thermal conductivity for hot and dense matter. The calculations are performed within the Polyakov quark meson model. The estimation of the transp
ort coefficients is made using the Boltzmann kinetic equation within the relaxation time approximation. The energy dependent relaxation time is estimated from meson meson scattering, quark meson scattering and quark quark scattering within the model. In our calculations, the shear viscosity to entropy ratio and the coefficient of thermal conductivity show a minimum at the critical temperature, while the ratio of bulk viscosity to entropy density exhibits a peak at this transition point.The effect of confinement modelled through a Polyakov loop potential plays an important role in the estimation of these dissipative coefficients both below and above the critical temperature.
We have evaluated the transport coefficients of quark and hadronic matter in the frame work of Polyakov-Quark-Meson model. The thermal widths of quarks and mesons, which inversely control the strength of these transport coefficients, are obtained fro
m the imaginary part of their respective self-energies at finite temperature. Due to the threshold conditions of their self energies, some limited temperature regions of quark and hadronic phase become relevant for our numerical predictions on transport coefficients, which are grossly in agreement with earlier results.
