Minijet initial state of heavy-ion collisions from next-to-leading order perturbative QCD

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to calculate field-theoretically as rigorously as possible the initial state of partonic matter produced in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions at CERN-LHC and BNL-RHIC colliders. The computed minijet initial conditions are then used in the initialization of the relativistic hydrodynamical modeling of these collisions. In the theoretical introduction part the computation of parton production cross section at next-to-leading order (NLO) perturbative QCD (pQCD) is discussed. Furthermore, the full analytical calculation for the squared quark-quark scattering matrix element including the systematic ultraviolet renormalization is presented. Finally, the subtraction method allowing for the cancellation of the infrared and collinear singularities in the partonic QCD cross section at NLO is discussed. In the more phenomenological part of the thesis the original EKRT model, which combines collinearly factorized leading-order pQCD minijet production with gluon saturation, is introduced. Next, the minijet production is generalized rigorously to NLO. In particular, a new set of measurement functions is introduced to define the produced infrared- and collinear-safe minijet transverse energy, in terms of which the saturation is now formulated. Finally, the framework is updated with the latest knowledge of nuclear parton distribution functions. Using the NLO-improved EKRT model with hydrodynamics we obtained a good agreement with the measured centrality dependence of the low-transverse-momentum bulk observables, simultaneously at the LHC and RHIC. In particular, aiming at a determination of the QCD matter properties from these measurements, we were able to constrain the temperature dependence of the QCD matter shear viscosity, which is an important result.