Relativistic high energy heavy ion collision cross sections have been interpreted in terms of almost ideal liquid droplets of nuclear matter. The experimental low viscosity of these nuclear fluids have been of considerable recent quantum chromodynamic interest. The viscosity is here discussed in terms of the string fragmentation models wherein the temperature dependence of the nuclear fluid viscosity obeys the Vogel-Fulcher-Tammann law.
Shear viscosity $eta$ is calculated for the nuclear matter described as a system of interacting nucleons with the van der Waals (VDW) equation of state. The Boltzmann-Vlasov kinetic equation is solved in terms of the plane waves of the collective ove
rdamped motion. In the frequent-collision regime, the shear viscosity depends on the particle-number density $n$ through the mean-field parameter $a$, which describes attractive forces in the VDW equation. In the temperature region $T=15 - 40$~MeV, a ratio of the shear viscosity to the entropy density $s$ is smaller than 1 at the nucleon number density $n =(0.5 - 1.5),n^{}_0$, where $n^{}_0=0.16,$fm$^{-3}$ is the particle density of equilibrium nuclear matter at zero temperature. A minimum of the $eta/s$ ratio takes place somewhere in a vicinity of the critical point of the VDW system. Large values of $eta/sgg 1$ are, however, found in both the low-density, $nll n^{}_0$, and high-density, $n>2n^{}_0$, regions. This makes the ideal hydrodynamic approach inapplicable for these densities.
We study the nuclear stopping in high energy nuclear collisions using the constituent quark model. It is assumed that wounded nucleons with different number of interacted quarks hadronize in different ways. The probabilities of having such wounded nu
cleons are evaluated for proton-proton, proton-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions. After examining our model in proton-proton and proton-nucleus collisions and fixing the hadronization functions, it is extended to nucleus-nucleus collisions. It is used to calculate the rapidity distribution and the rapidity shift of final state protons in nucleus-nucleus collisions. The computed results are in good agreement with the experimental data on $^{32}mbox{S} + ^{32}mbox{S}$ at $E_{lab} = 200$ AGeV and $^{208}mbox{Pb} + ^{208}mbox{Pb}$ at $E_{lab} = 160$ AGeV. Theoretical predictions are also given for proton rapidity distribution in $^{197}mbox{Au} + ^{197}mbox{Au}$ at $sqrt{s} = 200$ AGeV (BNL-RHIC). We predict that the nearly baryon free region will appear in the midrapidity region and the rapidity shift is $langle Delta y rangle = 2.22$.
We discuss the energy flow of the classical gluon fields created in collisions of heavy nuclei at collider energies. We show how the Yang-Mills analoga of Faradays Law and Gauss Law predict the initial gluon flux tubes to expand or bend. The resultin
g transverse and longitudinal structure of the Poynting vector field has a rich phenomenology. Besides the well known radial and elliptic flow in transverse direction, classical quantum chromodynamics predicts a rapidity-odd transverse flow that tilts the fireball for non-central collisions, and it implies a characteristic flow pattern for collisions of non-symmetric systems $A+B$. The rapidity-odd transverse flow translates into a directed particle flow $v_1$ which has been observed at RHIC and LHC. The global flow fields in heavy ion collisions could be a powerful check for the validity of classical Yang-Mill dynamics in high energy collisions.
The short-range and tensor correlations associated to realistic nucleon-nucleon interactions induce a population of high-momentum components in the many-body nuclear wave function. We study the impact of such high-momentum components on bulk observab
les associated to isospin asymmetric matter. The kinetic part of the symmetry energy is strongly reduced by correlations when compared to the non-interacting case. The origin of this behavior is elucidated using realistic interactions with different short-range and tensor structures.
We present a quantitative study of vorticity formation in peripheral ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions at sqrt(s)NN = 200 GeV by using the ECHO-QGP numerical code, implementing relativistic dissipative hydrodynamics in the causal Israel-Stewart
framework in 3+1 dimensions with an initial Bjorken flow profile. We consider and discuss different definitions of vorticity which are relevant in relativistic hydrodynamics. After demonstrating the excellent capabilities of our code, which proves to be able to reproduce Gubser flow up to 8 fm/c, we show that, with the initial conditions needed to reproduce the measured directed flow in peripheral collisions corresponding to an average impact parameter b=11.6 fm and with the Bjorken flow profile for a viscous Quark Gluon Plasma with eta/s=0.1 fixed, a vorticity of the order of some 10^{-2} c/fm can develop at freezeout. The ensuing polarization of Lambda baryons does not exceed 1.4% at midrapidity. We show that the amount of developed directed flow is sensitive to both the initial angular momentum of the plasma and its viscosity.