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Berndt Müller

Publications and source records attributed to Berndt Müller.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources
arXiv2015

Viscous Leptons in the Quark Gluon Plasma

We investigate the shear viscosity of leptons in a strongly coupled quark gluon plasma (QGP). We find that the shear viscosity due to the lepton-quark scattering is inversely proportional to the ratio of electric conductivity of the QGP to temperature up to the leading logarithmic order of the electromagnetic coupling. The finding implies that the thermal leptons form a more viscous fluid than the quarks by a large ratio. Using the known result for the electrical conductivity of strongly coupled plasmas obtained from gauge/gravity duality, we find that the lepton shear viscosity is suppressed compared with the one from lepton-lepton scattering. Consistently, we find an enhancement of the energy loss of hard leptons in a strongly coupled scenario compared with that in a weakly coupled plasma.

hep-th↗
arXiv2015

A New Phase of Matter: Quark-Gluon Plasma Beyond the Hagedorn Critical Temperature

I retrace the developments from Hagedorn's concept of a limiting temperature for hadronic matter to the discovery and characterization of the quark-gluon plasma as a new state of matter. My recollections begin with the transformation more than 30 years ago of Hagedorn's original concept into its modern interpretation as the "critical" temperature separating the hadron gas and quark-gluon plasma phases of strongly interacting matter. This was followed by the realization that the QCD phase transformation could be studied experimentally in high-energy nuclear collisions. I describe here my personal effort to help develop the strangeness experimental signatures of quark and gluon deconfinement and recall how the experimental program proceeded soon to investigate this idea, at first at the SPS, then at RHIC, and finally at LHC. As it is often the case, the experiment finds more than theory predicts, and I highlight the discovery of the "perfectly" liquid quark-gluon plasma at RHIC. I conclude with an outline of future opportunities, especially the search for a critical point in the QCD phase diagram.

nucl-th↗
arXiv2014

Elliptic and triangular flow anisotropy in deuteron-gold collisions at RHIC and proton-lead collisions at the LHC

We study elliptic and triangular flow in the collisions of deuteron-gold nuclei at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}} = 200$ GeV at RHIC and of proton-lead nuclei at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}} = 5.02$ TeV at the LHC, utilizing (3+1)-dimensional ideal hydrodynamics for the dynamic evolution of the fireball and a Glauber-based Monte-Carlo energy deposition model for simulating the fluctuating initial conditions. Sizable values of elliptic and triangular flow are obtained for both colliding systems, and the results are consistent with PHENIX, ALICE, ATLAS and CMS measurements. For these studied centralities, we find that the elliptic flow in proton-lead collisions is smaller than deuteron-gold collisions, while the triangular flows are comparable in both colliding systems. Our results indicate that the observed collective anisotropic flow in deuteron-gold and proton-lead collisions may be obtained from relativistic hydrodynamic evolution of the fireball with initial state fluctuations.

nucl-th↗
arXiv2014

Collinear parton splitting in early thermalization and chemical equilibration

Early local equilibration of a hot medium created in high-energy heavy ion collisions has been one of the long standing issues in hadron physics. The glasma model predicts that the medium initially has a large amount of high-momentum gluons but few quarks. We develop a phenomenological model based on collinear splitting and recombination of quarks and gluons for a simplified description of thermalization and chemical equilibration. We find that both could be achieved in a short time but chemical equilibration is slower than thermalization.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2014

Mapping the Proton's Fluctuating Waistline

We discuss a mechanism for the apparently universal scaling in the high-multiplicity tail of charged particle distributions for high energy nuclear collisions. We argue that this scaling behavior originates from rare fluctuations of the nucleon density. We discuss a pair of simple models of proton shape fluctuations. A "fat" proton with a size of 3 fm occurs with observable frequency. In light of this result, collective flow behavior in the ensuing nuclear interaction seems feasible. We discuss the influence of these models on the large $x$ structure of the proton and the likely influences on the distribution of initial state spatial eccentricities $ε_{n}$.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2013

Investigation of Hot QCD Matter: Theoretical Aspects

This lecture presents an overview of the status of the investigation of the properties of the quark-gluon plasma using relativistic heavy ion collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It focuses on the insights that have been obtained by the comparison between experimental data from both facilities and theoretical calculations.

nucl-th↗
arXiv2013

Center Domains and their Phenomenological Consequences

We argue that the domain structure of deconfined QCD matter, which can be inferred from the properties of the Polyakov loop, can simultaneously explain the two most prominent experimentally verified features of the quark-gluon plasma, namely its large opacity as well as its near ideal fluid properties.

nucl-th↗
arXiv2013

Light Probes in a Strongly Coupled Anisotropic Plasma

We employ the gauge/gravity duality to study the jet quenching of light probes traversing a static yet anisotropic strongly coupled $\mathcal{N}=4$ super Yang-Mills plasma. We compute the stopping distance of an image jet induced by a massless source field, which is characterized by a massless particle falling along the null geodesic in the WKB approximation, in an anisotropic dual geometry introduced by Mateos and Trancancelli. At mid and large anisotropic regimes, the stopping distances of a probe traveling in the anisotropic plasma along various orientations are suppressed compared to those in an isotropic plasma especially along the longitudinal direction at equal temperature. However, when fixing the entropy density, the anisotropic values of stopping distances near the transverse directions slightly surpass the isotropic values. In general, the jet quenching of light probes is increased by the anisotropic effect in a strongly coupled and equilibrium plasma.

hep-th↗
arXiv2012

Approach to equilibrium in the Caldeira-Leggett Model

The Caldeira-Leggett model describes a microscopic quantum system, represented by a harmonic oscillator, in interaction with a heat bath, represented by a large number of harmonic oscillators with a range of frequencies. We consider the case when the system oscillator starts out in the ground state and then thermalizes due to interactions with the heat bath, which is at temperature $θ$. We calculate the position autocorrelation function $ $ of the system oscillator at two different times and study its behaviour in the small and large time limits. Our results show that the system oscillator thermalizes as expected. We also confirm by explicit calculation that the position autocorrelation function exhibits periodicity for imaginary values of the time difference $t'-t = iτ$ at late (real) times $t$.

nucl-th↗
arXiv2012

Collisional vs. Radiative Energy Loss of Heavy Quark in a Hot and Dense Nuclear Matter

We study the heavy quark evolution in a quark-gluon plasma medium within the framework of Langevin equation coupled to a (2+1)-dimensional viscous hydrodynamic model. We modify the current Langevin algorithm such that apart from quasi-elastic scattering, medium-induced radiative energy loss is incorporated as well by treating gluon radiation as an extra force term. We find a significant effect of gluon radiation on heavy quark energy loss at LHC energies. Our calculation provides a good description of the D meson suppression measured by ALICE experiment, and makes a prediction for B meson suppression and flow.

nucl-th↗
arXiv2012

Jet Quenching and Holographic Thermalization

We employ the AdS/CFT correspondence to investigate the thermalization of the strongly-coupled plasma and the jet quenching of a hard probe traversing such a thermalizing medium.

hep-th↗
arXiv2012

Counting hot/cold spots in quark-gluon plasma

We study how local fluctuations in the initial states of relativistic heavy-ion collisions manifest themselves in the correlations between different orders of harmonic moments of the density profiles, particularly those involving only odd harmonics which purely arise from initial state fluctuations. We find the strengths of those correlations are sensitive to the number of hot and cold spots in the initial states. Hydrodynamic evolution of the fireball translates initial state geometric anisotropies as well as their correlations into final state momentum anisotropies and correlations. We conclude that the measurement of the correlations between different harmonic moments of final state azimuthal distribution can be employed to quantify the inhomogeneity of the initial density profiles such as the population of hot and cold spots that are produced in high energy nuclear collisions.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2012

Explanation of Di-jet asymmetry in Pb+Pb collisions at the Large Hadron Collider

We investigate the medium modification of a partonic jet shower traversing in a hot quark-gluon plasma. We derive and solve a differential equation that governs the evolution of the radiated gluon spectrum as the jet propagates through the medium. Energy contained inside the jet cone is lost by dissipation through elastic collisions with the medium and by scattering of shower partons to larger angles. We find that the jet energy loss at early times is dominated by medium effects on the vacuum radiation, and by medium-induced radiation effects at late times. We compare our numerical results for the nuclear modification of the di-jet asymmetry with that recently reported by the ATLAS collaboration.

hep-ph↗
arXiv2011

$J/ψ$ Production by Magnetic Excitation of $η_c$

We compute the probability of $J/ψ$ production from the interaction between $η_c$ and the strong magnetic field generated in relativistic heavy ion collisions. The computation is first carried out in the heavy quark effective model, in which the M1 radiative transition is considered. Then we investigate the transition in the framework of non-relativistic heavy hadron chiral perturbation theory and show that the polarization of $J/ψ$ produced by this process is parallel to the direction of magnetic field and thus perpendicular to the reaction plane. The transition probability obtained in both approaches is of order $2\times 10^{-4}$.

hep-ph↗