arXiv subjects

Berndt Muller

Publications and source records attributed to Berndt Muller.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2014

Elliptic flow from thermal photons with magnetic field in holography

We compute the elliptic flow $v_2$ of thermal photons in a strongly coupled plasma with constant magnetic field via gauge/gravity duality. The D3/D7 embedding is applied to generate the contributions from massive quarks. By considering the cases in 2+1 flavor SYM analogous to the photon production in QGP, we obtain the thermal-photon $v_2$, which is qualitatively consistent with the direct-photon $v_2$ measured in RHIC at intermediate energy. However, due to the simplified setup, the thermal-photon $v_2$ in our model should be regarded as the upper bound for the $v_2$ generated by solely magnetic field in the strongly coupled scenario.

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arXiv2013

Extracting jet transport coefficient from jet quenching at RHIC and LHC

Within five different approaches to parton propagation and energy loss in dense matter, a phenomenological study of experimental data on suppression of large $p_T$ single inclusive hadrons in heavy-ion collisions at both RHIC and LHC was carried out. The evolution of bulk medium used in the study for parton propagation was given by 2+1D or 3+1D hydrodynamic models which are also constrained by experimental data on bulk hadron spectra. Values for the jet transport parameter $\hat q$ at the center of the most central heavy-ion collisions are extracted or calculated within each model, with parameters for the medium properties that are constrained by experimental data on the hadron suppression factor $R_{AA}$. For a quark with initial energy of 10 GeV we find that $\hat q\approx 1.2 \pm 0.3$ GeV$^2$/fm at an initial time $τ_0=0.6$ fm/$c$ in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s}=200$ GeV/n and $\hat q\approx 1.9 \pm 0.7 $ GeV$^2$/fm in Pb+Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s}=2.76 $ TeV/n. Compared to earlier studies, these represent significant convergence on values of the extracted jet transport parameter, reflecting recent advances in theory and the availability of new experiment data from the LHC.

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arXiv2013

On the Possibility of Event Shape Selection in Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions

We investigate the possibility of selecting heavy ion collision events with certain features in the initial state ("event engineering"). Anisotropic flow measurements in heavy ion reactions have confirmed the almost ideal fluid dynamical behaviour of the hot and dense quark gluon plasma state. As a consequence, it is intriguing to pursue the idea of selecting collisions with a certain special initial geometry, e.g., a large ellipsoidal or triangular deformation, by classifying events by the value of their final observed flow coefficients. This procedure could be especially interesting for azimuthally dependent jet energy loss studies. We investigate the correlation between initial state features and final state momentum space anisotropies within an event-by-event hybrid approach. We find that the finite particle number and hadronic rescattering of the final state leads to large event-by-event fluctuations in the observables that could be used to characterize the features of the initial state. This makes event engineering by final state selection difficult.

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arXiv2013

On Collective Properties of Turbulent QED Plasma

Polarization properties of turbulent stochastically inhomogeneous ultrarelativistic QED plasma are studied. It is shown that the sign of nonlinear turbulent Landau damping corresponds to an instability of the spacelike modes and, for sufficiently large turbulent fields, to an actual instability of a system. Modification of plasmon dispersion relations due to turbulent effects are studied.

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arXiv2013

Production of Prompt Photons and Dileptons in Rapid Holographic Thermalization

We study the lightlike and timelike R-current correlators in the AdS-Vaidya spacetime, which are associated with the production of prompt photons and dileptons from a nonequilibrium, rapidly thermalizing, and strongly coupled plasma in the AdS/CFT correspondence. In particular, we focus on the photon production. We find that the amplitude of the photon-emission spectrum increases during the thermalization of the medium. Also, the time-dependent emission rate for hard photons has an oscillatory pattern and thermalizes faster than soft photons.

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arXiv2012

Turbulence-Induced Instabilities in EP and QGP

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arXiv2012

Comparison of Jet Quenching Formalisms for a Quark-Gluon Plasma "Brick"

We review the currently available formalisms for radiative energy loss of a high-momentum parton in a dense strongly interacting medium. The underlying theoretical framework of the four commonly used formalisms is discussed and the differences and commonalities between the formalisms are highlighted. A quantitative comparison of the single gluon emission spectra as well as the energy loss distributions is given for a model system consisting of a uniform medium with a fixed length of L=2 fm and L=5 fm (the `Brick'). Sizable quantitative differences are found. The largest differences can be attributed to specific approximations that are made in the calculation of the radiation spectrum.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2012

What can we learn from Dijet suppression at RHIC?

We present a systematic study of the dijet suppression at RHIC using the VNI/BMS parton cascade. We examine the modification of the dijet asymmetry A_j and the within-cone transverse energy distribution (jet-shape) along with partonic fragmentation distributions z and j_t in terms of: qhat; the path length of leading and sub-leading jets; cuts on the jet energy distributions; jet cone angle and the jet-medium interaction mechanism. We find that A_j is most sensitive to qhat and relatively insensitive to the nature of the jet-medium interaction mechanism. The jet profile is dominated by qhat and the nature of the interaction mechanism. The partonic fragmentation distributions clearly show the jet modification and differentiate between elastic and radiative+elastic modes.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2012

First Results from Pb+Pb collisions at the LHC

At the end of 2010, the CERN Large Hadron Collider started operation with heavy ion beams, colliding lead nuclei at a centre-of-mass energy of 2.76 TeV/nucleon and opening a new era in ultra-relativistic heavy ion physics at energies exceeding previous accelerators by more than an order of magnitude. This review summarizes the results from the first year of heavy ion physics at LHC obtained by the three experiments participating in the heavy ion program, ALICE, ATLAS, and CMS.

hep-ex↗

arXiv2010

Quasi-linear transport approach to equilibration of quark-gluon plasmas

We derive the transport equations of quark-gluon plasma in the quasi-linear approximation. The equations are either of the Balescu-Lenard or Fokker-Planck form. The plasma's dynamics is assumed to be governed by longitudinal chromoelectric fields. The isotropic plasma, which is stable, and the two-stream system, which is unstable, are considered in detail. A process of equilibration is briefly discussed in both cases. The peaks of the two-stream distribution are shown to rapidly dissolve in time.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2009

Towards a Theory of Entropy Production in the Little and Big Bang

We propose a broadly applicable formalism for the description of coarse grained entropy production in quantum mechanical processes. Our formalism is based on the Husimi transform of the quantum state, which encodes the notion that information about any quantum state is limited by the experimental resolution. We show in two analytically tractable cases (the decay of an unstable vacuum state and reheating after cosmic inflation) that the growth rate of the Wehrl entropy associated with the Husimi function approaches the classical Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy. We also discuss various possible applications of our formalism, including the production of entropy in the early stages of a relativistic heavy ion collision.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2008

Decoherence and Entropy Production in Relativistic Nuclear Collisions

Short thermalization times of less than 1 fm/c for quark and gluon matter have been suggested by recent experiments at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). It has been difficult to justify this rapid thermalization in first-principle calculations based on perturbation theory or the color glass condensate picture. Here, we address the related question of the decoherence of the gluon field, which is a necessary component of thermalization. We present a simplified leading-order computation of the decoherence time of a gluon ensemble subject to an incoming flux of Weizsacker-Williams gluons. We also discuss the entropy produced during the decoherence process and its relation to the entropy in the final state which has been measured experimentally.

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arXiv2007

Longitudinal Broadening of Quenched Jets in Turbulent Color Fields

The near-side distribution of particles at intermediate transverse momentum, associated with a high momentum trigger hadron produced in a high energy heavy-ion collision, is broadened in rapidity compared with the jet cone. This broadened distribution is thought to contain the energy lost by the progenitor parton of the trigger hadron. We show that the broadening can be explained as the final-state deflection of the gluons radiated from the hard parton inside the medium by soft, transversely oriented, turbulent color fields that arise in the presence of plasma instabilities. The magnitude of the effect is found to grow with medium size and density and diminish with increasing energy of the associated hadron.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2006

The Decoherence Time in High Energy Heavy Ion Collisions

We calculate the decoherence time of the ground state wave function of a nucleus in a high energy heavy ion collision. We define this time as the decay time of the ratio Tr D^2 / (Tr D)^2 of traces of the density matrix D. We find that this time is smaller or equal to 1/Q_s, where the saturation scale Q_s is defined within the color glass condensate model of parton saturation. Our result supports the notion that the extremely rapid entropy production deduced for the early stage of heavy ion collisions at collider energies is to a large extent caused by the decoherence of the initial-state wave functions.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2006

Results from the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider

We describe the current status of the heavy ion research program at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). The new suite of experiments and the collider energies have opened up new probes of the medium created in the collisions. Our review focuses on the experimental discoveries to date at RHIC and their interpretation in the light of our present theoretical understanding of the dynamics of relativistic heavy ion collisions and of the structure of strongly interacting matter at high energy density.

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arXiv2005

Waking the Colored Plasma

We calculate the wake induced in a hot, dense QCD medium by a fast parton in the framework of linear response theory. We discuss two different scenarios: a weakly coupled quark gluon plasma (pQGP) described by hard-thermal loop (HTL) perturbation theory and a strongly coupled QGP (sQGP), which had the properties of a quantum liquid.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2005

From Entropy and Jet Quenching to Deconfinement?

The challenge of demonstrating that the matter produced in heavy ion collisions is a deconfined quark-gluon plasma, as predicted by lattice QCD calculations, is the challenge of measuring the number of thermodynamic degrees of freedom ν~ ε/T^4 at the time t0 at which the matter comes into approximate local thermal equilibrium and begins to behave like a hydrodynamic fluid. Data from experiments done at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider have been used to estimate t0 and to put a lower bound on the energy density ε(t0). However, measuring νhas seemed out of reach, because no current data serve even as qualitative proxies for the temperature T(t0). We point out that νmay equally appropriately be defined via ν~s^4/epsilon^3, where s is the entropy density, which can be estimated from the measured final state entropy. This estimate is based on the testable assumption of an isentropic expansion. The observation of jet quenching has the potential to provide an upper bound on the energy density at early times. Our goal is to motivate such an analysis by pointing out that it would set a lower bound on ν.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2004

How relativistic heavy ion collisions can help us understand the universe

We discuss the anthropic principle and its implications for our existence and the physical laws which govern the universe. Several amazing coincidences which provide conditions necessary for creation of life suggest that the "laws of nature" are not uniquely determined. The idea that our universe is only one among a multitude of universes with different physical laws, as predicted by the theory of chaotic cosmic inflation, provides a logically simple, but speculative resolution of the anthropic principle. An important insight of modern quantum field theory is that the physical laws are not only determined by symmetry principles, but also by the nature of the vacuum state. Experiments involving collisions of relativistic heavy ions provide the clearest tests of the hypothesis that properties of particles and forces can be modified by a change in the vacuum state. We outline the goals of these experiments and briefly review their current status.

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