arXiv subjects

Derek Teaney

Publications and source records attributed to Derek Teaney.

67 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2009

A Summary of Bulk Dynamics from Quark Matter 2009

I review the recent progress in measuring elliptic flow in heavy ion collisions. These measurements show clearly how hydrodynamics starts to develop as the system size is increased from peripheral to central collisions. During this transition, the momentum range described by hydrodynamics increases as the system progresses from a kinetic to a hydrodynamic regime. Many of the systematic deviations from ideal hydrodynamics are reproduced effortlessly once the shear viscosity is included. In order to extract the shear viscosity from the data, kinetic theory can be used to determine which aspects of the elliptic flow reflect the details of the microscopic interactions, and which aspects reflect the underlying transport coefficients. I also review the identified hadron elliptic flow and the predictions of hydrodynamics for the LHC.

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arXiv2009

Nearly Perfect Fluidity: From Cold Atomic Gases to Hot Quark Gluon Plasmas

Shear viscosity is a measure of the amount of dissipation in a simple fluid. In kinetic theory shear viscosity is related to the rate of momentum transport by quasi-particles, and the uncertainty relation suggests that the ratio of shear viscosity eta to entropy density s in units of hbar/k_B is bounded by a constant. Here, hbar is Planck's constant and k_B is Boltzmann's constant. A specific bound has been proposed on the basis of string theory where, for a large class of theories, one can show that eta/s is greater or equal to hbar/(4 pi k_B). We will refer to a fluid that saturates the string theory bound as a perfect fluid. In this review we summarize theoretical and experimental information on the properties of the three main classes of quantum fluids that are known to have values of eta/s that are smaller than hbar/k_B. These fluids are strongly coupled Bose fluids, in particular liquid helium, strongly correlated ultracold Fermi gases, and the quark gluon plasma. We discuss the main theoretical approaches to transport properties of these fluids: kinetic theory, numerical simulations based on linear response theory, and holographic dualities. We also summarize the experimental situation, in particular with regard to the observation of hydrodynamic behavior in ultracold Fermi gases and the quark gluon plasma.

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arXiv2009

Thermal Noise and Stochastic Strings in AdS/CFT

We clarify the structure of thermal noise in AdS/CFT by studying the dynamics of an equilibrated heavy quark string. Using the Kruskal extension of the correspondence to generate the dynamics of the field theory on the Keldysh contour, we show that the motion of the string is described by the classical equations of motion with a stochastic boundary condition on the stretched horizon. The form of the stochastic boundary condition is consistent with the dissipation on this surface and is found by integrating out the fluctuations inside of the stretched horizon. Solving the equations of motion for the fluctuating string we determine the full frequency dependence of the random force on the boundary quark and show that it is consistent with the frequency dependent dissipation. We show further that the stochastic motion reproduces the bulk to bulk two point functions of the Kruskal formalism. These turn out to be related to the usual retarded bulk to bulk propagator by KMS relations. Finally we analyze the stochastic equations and give a bulk picture of the random boundary force as a flip-flopping trailing string solution. The basic formalism can be applied to the fluctuations of gravitons, dilatons, and other fields.

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arXiv2008

Quarkonium transport in thermal AdS/CFT

We consider a heavy meson moving slowly through high temperature non-abelian plasmas. Using a simple dipole effective Lagrangian, we calculate the in-medium mass shift and the drag coefficient of the meson in $\N=4$ Super Yang Mills theory at weak and strong coupling. As anticipated, in the large $N$ limit the mass shift is finite while the drag is suppressed by $1/N^2$ . After comparing results to perturbative QCD estimates (which are also calculated), we reach the conclusion that relative to weak coupling expectations the effect of strong coupling is to reduce the momentum diffusion rate and to {\it increase} the relaxation time by up to a factor of four.

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arXiv2007

Transverse Momentum Broadening of a Fast Quark in a $\N=4$ Yang Mills Plasma

We compute the momentum broadening of a heavy fundamental charge propagating through a $\mathcal{N}=4$ Yang Mills plasma at large t' Hooft coupling. We do this by expressing the medium modification of the probe's density matrix in terms of a Wilson loop averaged over the plasma. We then use the AdS/CFT correspondence to evaluate this loop, by identifying the dual semi-classical string solution. The calculation introduces the type ``1'' and type ``2'' fields of the thermal field theory and associates the corresponding sources with the two boundaries of the AdS space containing a black hole. The transverse fluctuations of the endpoints of the string determine $κ_T = \sqrt{γλ} T^3 π$ -- the mean squared momentum transfer per unit time. ($γ$ is the Lorentz gamma factor of the quark.) The result reproduces previous results for the diffusion coefficient of a heavy quark. We compare our results with previous AdS/CFT calculations of $\hat{q}$.

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arXiv2006

Heavy Quark Diffusion in Strongly Coupled $\N=4$ Yang Mills

We express the heavy quark diffusion coefficient as the temporal variation of a Wilson line along the Schwinger-Keldysh contour. This generalizes the classical formula for diffusion as a force-force correlator to a non-abelian theory. We use this formula to compute the diffusion coefficient in strongly coupled $\N=4$ Yang-Mills by studying the fluctuations of a string in $AdS_5\times S_5$. The string solution spans the full Kruskal plane and gives access to contour correlations. The diffusion coefficient is $D=2/\sqrtλ πT$ and is therefore parametrically smaller than momentum diffusion, $η/(e+p)=1/4πT$. The quark mass must be much greater than $T\sqrtλ$ in order to treat the quark as a heavy quasi-particle. The result is discussed in the context of the RHIC experiments.

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arXiv2005

Heavy Quark Diffusion from the Lattice

We study the diffusion of heavy quarks in the Quark Gluon Plasma using the Langevin equations of motion and estimate the contribution of the transport peak to the Euclidean current-current correlator. We show that the Euclidean correlator is remarkably insensitive to the heavy quark diffusion coefficient and give a simple physical interpretation of this result using the free streaming Boltzmann equation. However if the diffusion coefficient is smaller than $\sim 1/(πT)$, as favored by RHIC phenomenology, the transport contribution should be visible in the Euclidean correlator. We outline a procedure to isolate this contribution.

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arXiv2005

How Much do Heavy Quarks Thermalize in a Heavy Ion Collision?

We investigate the thermalization of charm quarks in high energy heavy ion collisions. To this end, we calculate the diffusion coefficient in the perturbative Quark Gluon Plasma and relate it to collisional energy loss and momentum broadening. We then use these transport properties to formulate a Langevin model for the evolution of the heavy quark spectrum in the hot medium. The model is strictly valid in the non-relativistic limit and for all velocities $γv < \alphas^{-1/2}$ to leading logarithm in $T/m_D$. The corresponding Fokker-Planck equation can be solved analytically for a Bjorken expansion and the solution gives a simple estimate for the medium modifications of the heavy quark spectrum as a function of the diffusion coefficient. Finally we solve the Langevin equations numerically in a hydrodynamic simulation of the heavy ion reaction. The results of this simulation are the medium modifications of the charm spectrum $R_{AA}$ and the expected elliptic flow $v_2(p_T)$ as a function of the diffusion coefficient.

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arXiv2003

Baryon Stopping and the Valence Quark Distribution at Small x

We argue that the amount of baryon stopping observed in the central rapidity region of heavy ion collisions at RHIC is proportional to the nuclear valence quark distributions at small x. By generalizing Mueller's dipole model to describe Reggeons we construct a non-linear evolution equation for the valence quark distributions at small x in the leading double-logarithmic approximation. The equation includes the effects of gluon saturation in it. The solution of the evolution equation gives a valence quark distribution function $dn_{val}/dy \sim e^{-(0.4\div0.5) y}$. We show that this y-dependence as well as the predictions of Regge theory are consistent with the net-proton rapidity distribution reported by BRAHMS.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2003

An Impact Parameter Dipole Saturation Model

We develop a dipole model for HERA DIS data which incorporates the impact parameter distribution of the proton. The model describes the inclusive total $γ^*p$ cross-sections as well as the diffractive $J/ψ$ differential cross-sections. We compare the model with previous approaches and show that the $t$-distributions are sensitive to saturation phenomena. We estimate the boundary of the saturation region and show that it dominates the data in the low-$Q^2$ region where the total $γ^*p$ cross-section exhibits the same universal rise as hadronic cross-sections. The model is then extended to nuclei and shows good agreement with the nuclear shadowing data at small-$x$. Finally, we estimate the saturation scale in nuclei.

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arXiv2002

Viscous Corrections to Spectra, Elliptic Flow, and HBT Radii

I compute the first viscous correction to the thermal distribution function. With this correction, I calculate the effect of viscosity on spectra, elliptic flow, and HBT radii. Indicating the breakdown of hydrodynamics, viscous corrections become of order one for $p_{T}\sim 1.5$ GeV. Viscous corrections to HBT radii are particularly large and reduce the outward and longitudinal radii. This reduction is a direct consequence of the reduction in longitudinal pressure.

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arXiv2002

Chemical Freezeout in Heavy Ion Collisions

We construct a hadronic equation of state consistent with chemical freezeout and discuss how such an equation of state modifies the radial and elliptic flow in a hydrodynamic + hadronic cascade model of relativistic heavy ion collisions at the SPS. Incorporating chemical freezeout does not change the relation between pressure and energy density. However, it does change the relation between temperature and energy density. Consequently, when the hydrodynamic solution and freezeout are expressed in terms of energy density, chemical freezeout does not modify the hydrodynamic radial and elliptic flow velocities studied previously. Finally, we examine chemical freezeout within the hadronic cascade (RQMD). Once chemical freezeout is incorporated into the hydrodynamics, the final spectra and fireball lifetimes are insensitive to the temperature at which the switch from hydrodynamics to cascade is made. Closer inspection indicates that the pion spectrum in chemically frozen hydrodynamics is significantly cooler than in the hydro+cascade model. This difference is reflected in $v_{2}(p_{T})$. We extract the freezeout hadron density in RQMD and interpret it in thermal terms; the freezeout hadron density corresponds to a freezeout temperature of $T_{f}\approx100 $ MeV and $μ_π \approx 80 $ MeV.

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arXiv2002

Classical Computation of Elliptic Flow at Large Transverse Momentum

We compute the contribution of classical fields to the second Fourier coefficient (v_2) of the azimuthal gluon distribution at large transverse momentum in heavy ion collisions. We find that the classical contribution to the flow alone cannot account for the experimentally observed behavior of v_2(p_t) at large transverse momentum p_t.

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