We investigate the properties of the QCD matter across the deconfinement phase transition in the scope of the parton-hadron string dynamics (PHSD) transport approach. We present here in particular the results on the electromagnetic radiation, i.e. ph
oton and dilepton production, in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. By comparing our calculations for the heavy-ion collisions to the available data, we determine the relative importance of the various production sources and address the possible origin of the observed strong elliptic flow $v_2$ of direct photons. We argue that the different centrality dependence of the hadronic and partonic sources for direct photon production in nucleus-nucleus collisions can be employed to shed some more light on the origin of the photon $v_2$ puzzle. While the dilepton spectra at low invariant mass show in-medium effects like an enhancement from multiple baryonic resonance formation or a collisional broadening of the vector meson spectral functions, the dilepton yield at high invariant masses (above 1.1 GeV) is dominated by QGP contributions for central heavy-ion collisions at ultra-relativistic energies. This allows to have an independent view on the parton dynamics via their electromagnetic massive radiation.
Recent STAR data for the directed flow of protons, antiprotons and charged pions obtained within the beam energy scan program are analyzed within the Parton-Hadron-String-Dynamics (PHSD/HSD) transport models. Bo
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) t
ransport 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.
We study the properties of strongly interacting massive quantum fields in space-time as resulting from a parametric decay of the fields with a large decay width $gamma$. The resulting imaginary part of the retarded and advanced propagators in this ca
se is of Lorentzian form and the theory conserves microcausality, i.e. the commutator between the fields vanishes for space-like distances in space-time. However, when considering separately space-like and time-like components of the spectral function in momentum space we find microcausality to be violated for each component separately. This implies that the modeling of effective field theories for strongly interacting systems has to be considered with great care and restrictions to time-like four momenta in case of broad spectral functions have to be ruled out. Furthermore, when employing effective propagators with a width $gamma({bf p}^2)$ depending explicitly on three-momentum ${bf p}$ the commutator of the fields no longer vanishes for $r>t$ since the related field theory becomes nonlocal and violates microcausality.
This review provides a written version of the lectures presented at the Schladming Winter School 2008, Austria, on Nonequilibrium Aspects of Quantum Field Theory. In particular, it shows the way from quantum-field theory - in two-particle irreducible
approximation - to the Kadanoff-Baym (KB) equations and various approximations schemes of the KB equations in phase space. This ultimately leads to the formulation of an off-shell transport theory that well incorporates the underlying quantum physics. Remarkably, these transport equations may be solved within a testparticle representation that allows to study non-equilibrium quantum systems in the weak and strong coupling regime. Actual applications to dilepton production in heavy-ion reactions are presented in comparison with available data. The approach, furthermore, allows to address the hadronization process from partonic to hadronic degrees of freedom.
Dynamical quasiparticle properties are determined from lattice QCD along the line of the Peshier model for the running strong coupling constant in case of three light flavors. By separating time-like and space-like quantities in the number density
and energy density the effective degrees of freedom in the gluon and quark sector may be specified from the time-like densities. The space-like parts of the energy densities are identified with interaction energy (or potential energy) densities. By using the time-like parton densities (or scalar densities) as independent degrees of freedom variations of the potential energy densities with respect to the time-like gluon and/or fermion densities lead to effective mean-fields for time-like gluons and quarks as well as to effective gluon-gluon, quark-gluon and quark-quark (quark-antiquark) interactions. The latter dynamical quantities are found to be approximately independent on the quark chemical potential and thus well suited for an inplementation in off-shell parton transport approaches. Results from the dynamical quasiparticle model (DQPM) in case of two dynamical light quark flavors are compared to lattice QCD calculations for the net quark density as well as for the back-to-back differential dilepton production rate by $q-{bar q}$ annihilation. The DQPM is found to pass the independent tests.
In this study it is demonstrated that a simple picture of the QCD gluon liquid emerges in the dynamical quasiparticle model that specifies the active degrees of freedom in the time-like sector and yields a potential energy density in the space-like
sector. By using the time-like gluon density (or scalar gluon density) as an independent degree of freedom - instead of the temperature $T$ as a Lagrange parameter - variations of the potential energy density lead to effective mean-fields for time-like gluons and an effective gluon-gluon interaction strength at low density. The latter yields a simple dynamical picture for the gluon fusion to color neutral glueballs when approaching the phase boundary from a temperature higher than $T_c$ and paves the way for an off-shell transport theoretical description of the parton dynamics.
