arXiv subjects

Hannah Petersen

Publications and source records attributed to Hannah Petersen.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2015

The beam energy dependence of collective flow in heavy ion collisions

The major goals of heavy ion research are to explore the phase diagram of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) and to investigate the properties of the quark gluon plasma (QGP), a new state of matter created at high temperatures and/or densities. Collective anisotropic flow is one of the most promising observables to gain insights about the properties of the system created in relativistic heavy ion reactions. The current status of the beam energy dependence of the first three Fourier coefficients of the azimuthal distribution of the produced particles $v_1$ to $v_3$ within hybrid transport plus hydrodynamics approaches are summarized.

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arXiv2014

Anisotropic flow in transport+hydrodynamics hybrid approaches

This contribution to the focus issue covers anisotropic flow in hybrid approaches. The historical development of hybrid approaches and their impact on the interpretation of flow measurements is reviewed. The major ingredients of a hybrid approach and the transition criteria between transport and hydrodynamics are discussed. The results for anisotropic flow in (event-by-event) hybrid approaches are presented. Some hybrid approaches rely on hadronic transport for the late stages for the reaction (so called afterburner) and others employ transport approaches for the early non equilibrium evolution. In addition, there are 'full' hybrid calculations where a fluid evolution is dynamically embedded in a transport simulation. After demonstrating the success of hybrid approaches at high RHIC and LHC energies, existing hybrid caluclations for collective flow observables at lower beam energies are discussed and remaining challenges outlined.

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arXiv2014

What the collective flow excitation function can tell about the quark-gluon plasma

Recent STAR data from the RHIC beam energy scan (BES) show that the midrapidity slope dv1/dy of the directed flow v1 of net-protons changes sign twice within the collision energy range 7.7 - 39 GeV. To investigate this phenomenon, we study the collision energy dependence of v1 utilizing a Boltzmann + hydrodynamics hybrid model. Calculations with dynamically evolved initial and final state show no qualitative difference between an equation of state with a cross-over and one with a first-order phase transition, in contrast to earlier pure fluid predictions. Furthermore, our analysis of the elliptic flow v2 shows that pre-equilibrium transport dynamics are partially compensating for the diminished elliptic flow production in the hydrodynamical phase at lower energies, which leads to a qualitative agreement with STAR BES results in midcentral collisions. No compensation from transport is found in our model for integrated v3, which decreases from approx 0.02 at sqrt(sNN) = 27 GeV to approx 0.005 at sqrt(sNN) = 7.7 GeV in midcentral collisions.

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arXiv2014

Initial State Fluctuations and Final State Correlations in Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions

We review the phenomenology and theory of bulk observables in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions, focussing on recent developments involving event-by-event fluctuations in the initial stages of a heavy ion collision, and how they manifest in observed correlations. We first define the relevant observables and show how each measurement is related to underlying theoretical quantities. Then we review the prevailing picture of the various stages of a collision, including the state-of-the-art modeling of the initial stages of a collision and subsequent hydrodynamic evolution, as well as hadronic scattering and freeze-out in the later stages. We then discuss the recent results that have shaped our current understanding and identify the challenges that remain. Finally, we point out open issues and the potential for progress in the field.

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arXiv2014

Evolution of elliptic and triangular flow as a function of collision energy in a hybrid model

We study the collision energy dependence of elliptic flow v_2 and triangular flow v_3 in Au+Au collisions within the energy range sqrt(s_{NN}) = 5-200 GeV, utilizing a transport + hydrodynamics hybrid model. The transport part is described by the Ultrarelativistic Quantum Molecular Dynamics (UrQMD) approach, combined with an intermediate (3+1)-dimensional ideal hydrodynamical evolution phase using a chiral model equation of state. We find the decrease of v_2 produced by hydrodynamics at lower collision energies partially compensated by the transport dynamics. This does not apply to v_3, which falls to 0 in midcentral collisions at sqrt(s_{NN}) = 5 GeV. We conclude that the triangular flow provides the clearer signal for the formation of low-viscous fluid in heavy ion collisions.

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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

Evolution of elliptic and triangular flow as a function of beam energy in a hybrid model

Elliptic flow has been one of the key observables for establishing the finding of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) at the highest energies of Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). As a sign of collectively behaving matter, one would expect the elliptic flow to decrease at lower beam energies, where the QGP is not produced. However, in the recent RHIC beam energy scan, it has been found that the inclusive charged hadron elliptic flow changes relatively little in magnitude in the energies between 7.7 and 39 GeV per nucleon-nucleon collision. We study the collision energy dependence of the elliptic and triangular flow utilizing a Boltzmann + hydrodynamics hybrid model. Such a hybrid model provides a natural framework for the transition from high collision energies, where the hydrodynamical description is essential, to smaller energies, where the hadron transport dominates. This approach is thus suitable to investigate the relative importance of these two mechanisms for the production of the collective flow at different values of beam energy. Extending the examined range down to 5 GeV per nucleon-nucleon collision allows also making predictions for the CBM experiment at FAIR.

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arXiv2013

Classification of initial state granularity via 2d Fourier Expansion

A new method to quantify fluctuations in the initial state of heavy ion collisions is presented. The initial state energy distribution is decomposed with a set of orthogonal basis functions which include both angular and radial variation. The resulting two dimensional Fourier coefficients provide additional information about the nature of the initial state fluctuations compared to a purely angular decomposition. We apply this method to ensembles of initial states generated by both Glauber and Color Glass Condensate Monte-Carlo codes. In addition initial state configurations with varying amounts of fluctuations generated by a dynamic transport approach are analysed to test the sensitivity of the procedure. The results allow for a full characterization of the initial state structures that is useful to discriminate the different initial state models currently in use.

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arXiv2013

Collision Energy Evolution of Elliptic and Triangular Flow in a Hybrid Model

While the existence of a strongly interacting state of matter, known as 'quark-gluon plasma' (QGP), has been established in heavy ion collision experiments in the past decade, the task remains to map out the transition from the hadronic matter to the QGP. This is done by measuring the dependence of key observables (such as particle suppression and elliptic flow) on the collision energy of the heavy ions. This procedure, known as 'beam energy scan', has been most recently performed at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). Utilizing a Boltzmann+hydrodynamics hybrid model, we study the collision energy dependence of initial state eccentricities and the final state elliptic and triangular flow. This approach is well suited to investigate the relative importance of hydrodynamics and hadron transport at different collision energies.

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arXiv2012

Initial state fluctuations and final state correlations: Status and open questions

The recent appreciation of the importance of event-by-event fluctuations in relativistic heavy-ion collisions has lead to a large amount of diverse theoretical and experimental activity. In particular, there is significant interest in understanding the fluctuations in the initial stage of a collision, how exactly these fluctuations are propagated through the system evolution, and how they are manifested in correlations between measured particles. In order to address these questions a workshop was organized on "Initial State Fluctuations and Final State Correlations", held at ECT* in Trento, Italy during the week of 2--6 July, 2012. The goal was to collect recent work in order to provide a coherent picture of the current status of our understanding, to identify important questions that remain open, and to set a course for future research. Here we report the outcome of the presentations and discussions, focusing on the most important conclusions.

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arXiv2012

Event-by-Event Observables and Fluctuations

In this talk the status and open questions of the phenomenological description of all the stages of a heavy ion reaction are highlighted. Special emphasis is put on event-by-event fluctuations and associated observables. The first part is concentrated on high RHIC and LHC energies and the second part reviews the challenges for modeling heavy ion reactions at lower beam energies in a more realistic fashion. Overall, the main conclusion is that sophisticated theoretical dynamical approaches that describe many observables in the same framework are essential for the quantitative understanding of the properties of hot and dense nuclear matter.

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arXiv2012

Particlization in hybrid models

In hybrid models, which combine hydrodynamical and transport approaches to describe different stages of heavy-ion collisions, conversion of fluid to individual particles, particlization, is a non-trivial technical problem. We describe in detail how to find the particlization hypersurface in a 3+1 dimensional model, and how to sample the particle distributions evaluated using the Cooper-Frye procedure to create an ensemble of particles as an initial state for the transport stage. We also discuss the role and magnitude of the negative contributions in the Cooper-Frye procedure.

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arXiv2012

Probing the QCD Critical Point with Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions

We utilize an event-by-event relativistic hydrodynamic calculation performed at a number of different incident beam energies to investigate the creation of hot and dense QCD matter near the critical point. Using state-of-the-art analysis and visualization tools we demonstrate that each collision event probes QCD matter characterized by a wide range of temperatures and baryo-chemical potentials, making a dynamical response of the system to the vicinity of the critical point very difficult to isolate above the background.

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arXiv2012

A systematic study of the sensitivity of triangular flow to the initial state fluctuations in relativistic heavy-ion collisions

Experimental data from the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) suggests that the quark gluon plasma behaves almost like an ideal fluid. Due to its short lifetime, many QGP properties can only be inferred indirectly through a comparison of the final state measurements with transport model calculations. Among the current phenomena of interest are the interdependencies between two collective flow phenomena, elliptic and triangular flow. The former is mostly related to the initial geometry and collective expansion of the system whereas the latter is sensitive to the fluctuations of the initial state. For our investigation we use a hybrid transport model based on the Ultra-relativistic Quantum Molecular Dynamics (UrQMD) transport approach using an ideal hydrodynamic expansion for the hot and dense stage. Using UrQMD initial conditions for an Au-Au collision, particles resulting from a collision are mapped into an energy density distribution that is evolved event-by-event with a hydrodynamic calculation. By averaging these distributions over different numbers of events, we have studied how the granularity/smoothness of the distribution affects the initial eccentricity, the initial triangularity, and the resulting flow components. The average elliptic flow in non central collisions is not sensitive to the granularity, while triangular flow is. The triangularity might thus provide a good measure of the amount of initial state fluctuations that is necessary to reproduce the experimental data.

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arXiv2011

Identified Particle Spectra and Anisotropic Flow in an Event-by-Event Hybrid Approach in Pb+Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}=2.76$ TeV

The first results from heavy ion collisions at the Large Hadron Collider for charged particle spectra and elliptic flow are compared to an event-by-event hybrid approach with an ideal hydrodynamic expansion. This approach has been shown to successfully describe bulk observables at RHIC. Without changing any parameters of the calculation the same approach is applied to Pb+Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}=2.76$ TeV. This is an important test if the established understanding of the dynamics of relativistic heavy ion collisions is also applicable at even higher energies. Specifically, we employ the hybrid approach with two different equations of state and the pure hadronic transport approach to indicate sensitivities to finite viscosity. The centrality dependence of the charged hadron multiplicity, $p_T$ spectra and differential elliptic flow are shown to be in reasonable agreement with the ALICE data. Furthermore, we make predictions for the transverse mass spectra of identified particles and triangular flow. The eccentricities and their fluctuations are found to be surprisingly similar to the ones at lower energies and therefore also the triangular flow results are very similar. Any deviations from these predictions will indicate the need for new physics mechanisms responsible for the dynamics of heavy ion collisions.

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arXiv2011

Longitudinal correlation of the triangular flow event plane in a hybrid approach with hadron and parton cascade initial conditions

The longitudinal long-range correlations of the triangular flow event plane angles are calculated in a Boltzmann + hydrodynamics hybrid approach. The potential to disentangle different energy deposition scenarios is explored by utilizing two different transport approaches for the early non-equilibrium evolution. In the hadronic transport approach the particle production in high energy heavy ion reactions is mainly governed by string excitation and fragmentation processes which are absent in the parton cascade approach. We find that in both approaches the initial state shows a strong longitudinal correlation of the event plane angles which is diluted but still persists in the final state momentum space distributions of the produced particles. A ridge-like structure can also be caused by near-collinear gluon radiation in a parton cascade approach and does not necessarily prove longitudinal flux tubes in the initial state.

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arXiv2011

Constraining the initial state granularity with bulk observables in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}=200$ GeV

In this paper we conduct a systematic study of the granularity of the initial state of hot and dense QCD matter produced in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions and its influence on bulk observables like particle yields, $m_T$ spectra and elliptic flow. For our investigation we use a hybrid transport model, based on (3+1)d hydrodynamics and a microscopic Boltzmann transport approach. The initial conditions are generated by a non-equilibrium hadronic transport approach and the size of their fluctuations can be adjusted by defining a Gaussian smoothing parameter $σ$. The dependence of the hydrodynamic evolution on the choices of $σ$ and $t_{start}$ is explored by means of a Gaussian emulator. To generate particle yields and elliptic flow that are compatible with experimental data the initial state parameters are constrained to be $σ=1$ fm and $t_{\rm start}=0.5$ fm. In addition, the influence of changes in the equation of state is studied and the results of our event-by-event calculations are compared to a calculation with averaged initial conditions. We conclude that even though the initial state parameters can be constrained by yields and elliptic flow, the granularity needs to be constrained by other correlation and fluctuation observables.

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arXiv2011

Medium-modified Jets and Initial State Fluctuations as Sources of Charge Correlations Measured at RHIC

We investigate the contribution of medium-modified jets and initial state fluctuations to the asymmetry in charged particle production with respect to the reaction plane. This asymmetry has been suggested as a compelling signature of the Chiral Magnetic Effect in QCD and make a study of "conventional" scenarios for the creation of such charged particle multiplicity fluctuations a timely endeavor. The different pathlength combinations of jets through the medium in non-central heavy ion collisions result in finite correlations of like and different charged particles emitted in the different hemispheres. Our calculation is based on combining jet events from YaJEM (Yet another Jet Energy Loss Model) and a bulk medium evolution. It is found that the jet production probabilities are too small to observe this effect. The influence of initial state fluctuations on this observable is explored using an event-by-event (3+1)d hybrid approach that is based on UrQMD (Ultra-relativistic Quantum Molecular Dynamics) with an ideal hydrodynamic evolution. In this calculation momentum conservation and elliptic flow are explicitly taken into account. The asymmetries in the initial state are translated to a final state momentum asymmetry by the hydrodynamic flow profile. Dependent on the size of the initial state fluctuations the resulting charged particle asymmetries are in qualitative agreement with the preliminary STAR results. The multi-particle correlation as proposed by the PHENIX collaboration can in principle be used to disentangle the different contributions, however is in practice substantially affected by the procedure to subtract trivial resonance decay contributions.

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