arXiv subjects

Guy D. Moore

Publications and source records attributed to Guy D. Moore.

At least 91 records · Page 5Linked to original sources

arXiv2011

Thermalization in Weakly Coupled Nonabelian Plasmas

We investigate how relativistic, nonabelian plasmas approach equilibrium in a general context. Our treatment is entirely parametric and for small Yang-Mills coupling $α$. First we study isotropic systems with an initially nonequilibrium momentum distribution. We consider both the case of initially very high occupancy and initially very low occupancy. Then we consider systems which are anisotropic. We consider both weak anisotropy and large anisotropy, and allow the occupancy to be parametrically large or small. Writing the typical momentum of an initial excitation as Q and the final temperature as T, full equilibration occurs in a time t ~ α^{-2}/T for T > Q, and t ~ α^{-2} Q^{1/2} T^{-3/2} for T < Q, unless the initial system is sufficiently anisotropic and T > α^{2/3} Q, in which case equilibration occurs somewhat faster, t ~ α^{-13/7} Q^{5/7} T^{-12/7} (or α^{-2}/T if that is longer).

hep-ph↗

arXiv2011

Kubo Formulae for Second-Order Hydrodynamic Coefficients

At second order in gradients, conformal relativistic hydrodynamics depends on the viscosity eta and on five additional "second-order" hydrodynamical coefficients tauPi, kappa, lambda1, lambda2, and lambda3. We derive Kubo relations for these coefficients, relating them to equilibrium, fully retarded 3-point correlation functions of the stress tensor. We show that the coefficient lambda3 can be evaluated directly by Euclidean means and does not in general vanish.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2011

Exploring the Phase Diagram with Taylor Series: Epic Voyage or Just Another Bad Trip

It has been suggested in the literature that it may be possible to locate the QCD critical end point using the Taylor series of thermodynamic variables about the $μ=0$ axis. Since the phase transition at the critical end point is believed to be in the 3D Ising universality class, it would seem natural to test this method with the Ising Model, for which the answer is already known. The finding is that it is in fact possible to pinpoint the location of the Ising critical point using Taylor coefficients.

hep-lat↗

arXiv2011

Chain Inflation Reconsidered

We investigate density perturbations in the chain inflation scenario, where the inflaton undergoes successive tunneling transitions along one field direction. First we show that when the bubble walls associated with such a phase transition meet, they induce the next phase transition and continue to propagate as phase interfaces. Then we present an analytical calculation of the density fluctuations and an estimate of non-Gaussianities such as f_{NL}, which we find to be small (of order 1). To get the right amplitude for the power spectrum, there have to be 10^8 phase transitions per Hubble time, a significant model building challenge. We find that working models of chain inflation must be rather strongly coupled, and thus have a very limited range of validity as effective field theories. We discuss generalizations to the multiple field case, the curvaton scenario, and noncanonical kinetic terms.

hep-th↗

arXiv2011

The stickiness of sound: An absolute lower limit on viscosity and the breakdown of second order relativistic hydrodynamics

Hydrodynamics predicts long-lived sound and shear waves. Thermal fluctuations in these waves can lead to the diffusion of momentum density, contributing to the shear viscosity and other transport coefficients. Within viscous hydrodynamics in 3+1 dimensions, this leads to a positive contribution to the shear viscosity, which is finite but inversely proportional to the microscopic shear viscosity. Therefore the effective infrared viscosity is bounded from below. The contribution to the second-order transport coefficient $τ_π$ is divergent, which means that second-order relativistic viscous hydrodynamics is inconsistent below some frequency scale. We estimate the importance of each effect for the Quark-Gluon Plasma, finding them to be minor if $η/s = 0.16$ but important if $η/s = 0.08$.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2011

The Bulk Viscosity of a Pion Gas

We compute the bulk viscosity of a gas of pions at temperatures below the QCD crossover temperature, for the physical value of pion mass, to lowest order in chiral perturbation theory. Bulk viscosity is controlled by number-changing processes which become exponentially slow at low temperatures when the pions become exponentially dilute, leading to an exponentially large bulk viscosity zeta ~ (F_0^8/m_π^5) exp(2m_π/T), where F_0 = 93 MeV is the pion decay constant.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2010

The Sphaleron Rate in SU(N) Gauge Theory

The sphaleron rate is defined as the diffusion constant for topological number NCS = int g^2 F Fdual/32 pi^2. It establishes the rate of equilibration of axial light quark number in QCD and is of interest both in electroweak baryogenesis and possibly in heavy ion collisions. We calculate the weak-coupling behavior of the SU(3) sphaleron rate, as well as making the most sensible extrapolation towards intermediate coupling which we can. We also study the behavior of the sphaleron rate at weak coupling at large Nc.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2009

Can electroweak bubble walls run away?

In extensions of the Standard Model with SU(2) singlet scalar fields, there can be regions of parameter space for which the electroweak phase transition is first order already at the mean-field level of analysis. We show that in this case the phase interface (bubble wall) can become ultra-relativistic, with the relativistic gamma factor gamma = (1-v_{wall}^2)^{-1/2} growing linearly with the wall's propagation distance. We provide a simple criterion for determining whether the bubble wall "runs away" in this way or if gamma approaches a terminal value.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2009

Jet energy loss, photon production, and photon-hadron correlations at RHIC

Jet energy loss, photon production and photon-hadron correlations are studied together at high transverse momentum in relativistic heavy-ion collisions at RHIC energies. The modification of hard jets traversing a hot and dense nuclear medium is evaluated by consistently taking into account induced gluon radiation and elastic collisions. The production of high transverse momentum photons in Au+Au collisions at RHIC is calculated by incorporating a complete set of photon-production channels. Comparison with experimental photon production and photon-hadron correlation data is performed, using a (3+1)-dimensional relativistic hydrodynamic description of the thermalized medium created in these collisions. Our results demonstrate that the interaction between the hard jets and the soft medium is important for the study of photon production and of photon-hadron correlation at RHIC.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2009

Heavy Quark Thermalization in Classical Lattice Gauge Theory: Lessons for Strongly-Coupled QCD

Thermalization of a heavy quark near rest is controlled by the correlator of two electric fields along a temporal Wilson line. We address this correlator within real-time, classical lattice Yang-Mills theory, and elaborate on the analogies that exist with the dynamics of hot QCD. In the weak-coupling limit, it can be shown analytically that the dynamics on the two sides are closely related to each other. For intermediate couplings, we carry out non-perturbative simulations within the classical theory, showing that the leading term in the weak-coupling expansion significantly underestimates the heavy quark thermalization rate. Our analytic and numerical results also yield a general understanding concerning the overall shape of the spectral function corresponding to the electric field correlator, which may be helpful in subsequent efforts to reconstruct it from Euclidean lattice Monte Carlo simulations.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2009

A way to estimate the heavy quark thermalization rate from the lattice

The thermalization rate of a heavy quark is related to its momentum diffusion coefficient. Starting from a Kubo relation and using the framework of the heavy quark effective theory, we argue that in the large-mass limit the momentum diffusion coefficient can be defined through a certain Euclidean correlation function, involving color-electric fields along a Polyakov loop. Furthermore, carrying out a perturbative computation, we demonstrate that the spectral function corresponding to this correlator is relatively flat at small frequencies. Therefore, unlike in the case of several other transport coefficients, for which the narrowness of the transport peak makes analytic continuation from Euclidean lattice data susceptible to severe systematic uncertainties, it appears that the determination of the heavy quark thermalization rate could be relatively well under control.

hep-lat↗

arXiv2009

Second order hydrodynamic coefficients from kinetic theory

In a relativistic setting, hydrodynamic calculations which include shear viscosity (which is first order in an expansion in gradients of the flow velocity) are unstable and acausal unless they also include terms to second order in gradients. To date such terms have only been computed in supersymmetric N=4 Super-Yang-Mills theory at infinite coupling. Here we compute these second-order hydrodynamic coefficients in weakly coupled QCD, perturbatively to leading order in the QCD coupling, using kinetic theory. We also compute them in QED and scalar lambda phi^4 theory.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2008

Bulk viscosity and spectral functions in QCD

We examine the behavior of the spectral function for the trace of the stress tensor in QCD in the two regimes where it is possible to make analytical progress; weak coupling, and close to a second order QCD phase transition. We determine the behavior of the bulk viscosity in each regime. We discuss the problem of analytic continuation of the (lattice) Euclidean correlation function to determine the spectral function. In each case the spectral function has a narrow peak at small frequency; its shape would be challenging to extract accurately from lattice data with error bars.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2008

Lattice four-dimensional N=4 SYM is practical

We show that nonperturbative lattice studies of four-dimensional N=4 Super-Yang-Mills are within reach. We use Ginsparg-Wilson fermions to avoid gluino masses and an exact implementation of the (chiral) $R$-symmetry, which greatly limits the number of counterterms that must be fine-tuned. Only bosonic operators require fine tuning, so all tunings can be done ``offline'' by a Ferrenberg-Swendsen type reweighting. We show what measurables can be used to perform the tuning.

hep-lat↗

arXiv2008

Heavy quark diffusion in QCD and N=4 SYM at next-to-leading order

We present the full details of a calculation at next-to-leading order of the momentum diffusion coefficient of a heavy quark in a hot, weakly coupled, QCD plasma. Corrections arise at O(g_s); physically they represent interference between overlapping scatterings, as well as soft, electric scale (p ~ gT) gauge field physics, which we treat using the hard thermal loop (HTL) effective theory. In 3-color, 3-flavor QCD, the momentum diffusion constant of a fundamental representation heavy quark at NLO is kappa = (16π/3) alpha_s^2 T^3 (log(1/g) + 0.07428 + 1.9026 g). We extend the computation to a heavy fundamental representation ``probe'' quark in large N_c, N=4 Super Yang-Mills theory, where the result is kappa^{SYM}= (lambda^2 T^3)(6π) (log(1/\sqrtλ) + 0.4304 + 0.8010 \sqrt{lambda}) (where lambda=g_s^2 N_c is the t'Hooft coupling). In the absence of some resummation technique, the convergence of perturbation theory is poor.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2007

3D N = 1 SYM Chern-Simons theory on the Lattice

We present a method to implement 3-dimensional N = 1 SUSY Yang-Mills theory (a theory with two real supercharges containing gauge fields and an adjoint Majorana fermion) on the lattice, including a way to implement the Chern-Simons term present in this theory. At nonzero Chern-Simons number our implementation suffers from a sign problem which will make the numerical effort grow exponentially with volume. We also show that the theory with vanishing Chern-Simons number is anomalous; its partition function identically vanishes.

hep-lat↗

arXiv2007

Radiative and Collisional Jet Energy Loss in the Quark-Gluon Plasma at RHIC

We calculate and compare bremsstrahlung and collisional energy loss of hard partons traversing a quark-gluon plasma. Our treatment of both processes is complete at leading order in the coupling and accounts for the probabilistic nature of the jet energy loss. We find that the nuclear modification factor $R_{AA}$ for neutral $π^0$ production in heavy ion collisions is sensitive to the inclusion of collisional and radiative energy loss contributions while the averaged energy loss only slightly increases if collisional energy loss is included for parent parton energies $E\gg T$. These results are important for the understanding of jet quenching in Au+Au collisions at $200 {\rm AGeV}$ at RHIC. Comparison with data is performed applying the energy loss calculation to a relativistic ideal (3+1)-dimensional hydrodynamic description of the thermalized medium formed at RHIC.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2007

Next-to-Leading Order Shear Viscosity in lambda phi^4 Theory

We show that the shear viscosity of lambda phi^4 theory is sensitive at next-to-leading order to soft physics, which gives rise to subleading corrections suppressed by only a half power of the coupling, eta = [3033.54 + 1548.3 m_{th}/T] N T^3]/[ (N+2)/3 lambda^2], with m^2_th=(N+2)/72 lambda T^2. The series appears to converge about as well (or badly) as the series for the pressure.

hep-ph↗