arXiv subjects

Huichao Song

Publications and source records attributed to Huichao Song.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2022

Scales in light-nuclei production near the QCD critical point

Based on the coalescence model, we analyse the light-nuclei production near the critical point by expanding the phase-space distribution function $f(\mathbf{r},\mathbf{p})$ in terms of the phase-space cumulants $\sim \langle r^m p^m\rangle_c$. We show that the dominant contribution of the phase-space distribution to the yield of light nuclei is determined by the second-order phase-space cumulants. Here, we identify the fireball size, the homogeneity length, and the effective temperature, which are encoded in the second-order phase-space cumulants, as the relevant scales in explaining the yield of light nuclei. These scales are typically much larger than the correlation length of the critical fluctuations created in the rapid expansion of the heavy-ion systems, so we need to eliminate this dominant contribution of the relevant scales in order to isolate the critical contribution from the yield of light nuclei. We find that the second-order phase-space cumulants appeared in the yields of light-nuclei with different mass numbers share a similar structure. This property allows us to construct ratios of light-nuclei yields in appropriate combinations so that the effect of the relevant scales of the light-nuclei yield cancels, which isolates the critical effects.

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arXiv2022

Examination of background effects on light-nuclei yield ratio in relativistic heavy-ion collisions

The light-nuclei yield ratio is one of the candidates to probe the critical fluctuations of hot QCD matter. In this paper, we investigate the \textit{background effects}, namely the non-critical effects coming from the non-trivial thermal background, on the light-nuclei production within the framework of the coalescence model. Specifically, we analyze the impact of the equilibrium phase-space distribution function of nucleons, $f(\mathbf{r},\mathbf{p})$, on the light-nuclei yield ratio $N_tN_p/N_d^2$, where $N_t$, $N_p$, and $N_d$ denote triton, proton, and deuteron yields. By considering the characteristic function of the phase-space distribution, we systematically expand the yield of light nuclei of $A$-constituent nucleons, $N_A$, in terms of the \textit{phase-space cumulants}, $\langle\mathbf{r}^n\mathbf{p}^m\rangle_c$. We find that the cumulants up to the second-order are canceled out in the generalized ratio $N_p^{B-A} N_B^{A-1}/N_A^{B-1}$. This means that the dominant background effects including the fireball size, the kinetic freeze-out temperature, and the coordinate--momentum correlations caused by the radial expansion play an insignificant role in the yield ratio, which supports the yield ratio as a useful tool for the critical-point search. We also show several examples of background phase-space distributions for the qualitative illustration. The higher-order cumulants, which correspond to the non-Gaussian shape of the phase-space profile, play an important role in the variation of the yield ratio particularly for the smaller fireball sizes. Qualitatively, the spatial structure of the background decreases the yield ratio, and the azimuthal anisotropy $v_n$ increases it. The higher order of the azimuthal anisotropy causes a larger effect on the yield ratio. These results call for the comprehensive future studies of the yield ratio using sophisticated dynamical models.

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arXiv2022

Baryonic spin Hall effects in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 7.7-200$ GeV

In this proceeding, we present our recent prediction on the local net Lambda polarization to search for the baryonic spin Hall effect (SHE) at RHIC BES energies. The baryonic SHE is induced by the gradients of baryon chemical potential, which leads to local polarization separation between baryons and anti-baryons. Based on hydrodynamic simulations with spin Cooper-Fryer formula, we propose to use $P^{\rm net}_{2,y}$ and $P^{\rm net}_{2,z}$, the second Fourier coefficients of net spin polarization to quantify this baryonic SHE. Future experimental observation of their non-trivial signatures could strongly support the existence of the baryon SHE in hot and dense QCD matter.

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arXiv2021

Application of radial basis functions neutral networks in spectral functions

The reconstruction of spectral function from correlation function in Euclidean space is a challenging task. In this paper, we employ the Machine Learning techniques in terms of the radial basis functions networks to reconstruct the spectral function from a finite number of correlation data. To test our method, we first generate one type of correlation data using a mock spectral function by mixing several Breit-Wigner propagators. We found that compared with other traditional methods, TSVD, Tikhonov, and MEM, our approach gives a continuous and unified reconstruction for both positive definite and negative spectral function, which is especially useful for studying the QCD phase transition. Moreover, our approach has considerably better performance in the low frequency region. This has advantages for the extraction of transport coefficients which are related to the zero frequency limit of the spectral function. With the mock data generated through a model spectral function of stress energy tensor, we find our method gives a precise and stable extraction of the transport coefficients.

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arXiv2021

Dynamical exploring the QCD matter at finite temperatures and densities-a short review

We provide a concise review on recent theory advancements towards full-fledged (3+1)D dynamical descriptions of relativistic nuclear collisions at finite baryon density. Heavy-ion collisions at different collision energies produce strongly-coupled matter and probe the QCD phase transition at the crossover, critical point, and first-order phase transition regions. Dynamical frameworks provide a quantitative tool to extract properties of hot QCD matter and map fireballs to the QCD phase diagram. Outstanding challenges are highlighted when confronting current theoretical frameworks with current and forthcoming experimental measurements from the RHIC beam energy scan programs.

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arXiv2021

Investigations on mixed harmonic cumulants in heavy-ion collisions at the LHC

A series of new flow observables mixed harmonic multi-particle cumulants (MHC), which allow for the first time to quantify the correlations strength between different order of flow coefficients with various moments, was investigated using hydrodynamic model. These new observables are constructed based on multi-particle cumulants, and thus by design will be less sensitive to the non-flow contaminations. In addition to the previous study of correlation involving two flow coefficients with their second moments, both correlations of three flow coefficients and the correlations of higher order moments of $v_2$ and $v_3$ are systematically investigated using iEBE-VISHNU hybrid model with two different initial conditions, AMPT and TRENTo, respectively. These systematic studies using hydrodynamic models will significantly improve the understanding on the correlations between different orders (and moments) of flow coefficients. The hydrodynamic predictions shown in this paper and the future comparisons to experimental measurements will provide more constraints on theoretical models and extract more information about the transport properties of the quark-gluon plasma created in heavy-ion collisions.

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arXiv2021

Applications of deep learning to relativistic hydrodynamics

Relativistic hydrodynamics is a powerful tool to simulate the evolution of the quark gluon plasma (QGP) in relativistic heavy ion collisions. Using 10000 initial and final profiles generated from 2+1-d relativistic hydrodynamics VISH2+1 with MC-Glauber initial conditions, we train a deep neural network based on stacked U-net, and use it to predict the final profiles associated with various initial conditions, including MC-Glauber, MC-KLN and AMPT and TRENTo. A comparison with the VISH2+1 results shows that the network predictions can nicely capture the magnitude and inhomogeneous structures of the final profiles, and nicely describe the related eccentricity distributions $P(\varepsilon_n)$ (n=2, 3, 4). These results indicate that deep learning technique can capture the main features of the non-linear evolution of hydrodynamics, showing its potential to largely accelerate the event-by-event simulations of relativistic hydrodynamics.

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arXiv2021

Shear-induced spin polarization in heavy-ion collisions

We study the spin polarization generated by the hydrodynamic gradients. In addition to the widely studied thermal vorticity effects, we identify an undiscovered contribution from the fluid shear. This shear-induced polarization (SIP) can be viewed as the fluid analog of strain-induced polarization observed in elastic and nematic materials. We obtain the explicit expression for SIP using the quantum kinetic equation and linear response theory. Based on a realistic hydrodynamic model, we compute the differential spin polarization along both the beam direction $\hat{z}$ and the out-plane direction $\hat{y}$ in non-central heavy-ion collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200$ GeV, including both SIP and thermal vorticity effects. We find that SIP contribution always shows the same azimuthal angle dependence as experimental data and competes with thermal vorticity effects. In the scenario that $Λ$ inherits and memorizes the spin polarization of strange quark, SIP wins the competition, and the resulting azimuthal angle dependent spin polarization $P_y$ and $P_z$ agrees qualitatively with the experimental data.

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arXiv2021

A hydrodynamic study of hyperon spin polarization in relativistic heavy ion collisions

We perform a systematic study of the spin polarization of hyperons in heavy-ion collisions using the MUSIC hydrodynamic model with A Multi-Phase Transport (AMPT) pre-equilibrium dynamics. Our model calculations nicely describe the measured collision-energy, centrality, rapidity, and $p_T$ dependence of $Λ$ polarization. We also study and predict the global spin polarization of $Ξ^-$ and $Ω^-$ as a function of collision energy, which provides a baseline for the studies of the magnetic moment, spin, and mass dependence of the spin polarization. For the local spin polarization, we calculate the radial and azimuthal components of the transverse $Λ$ polarization and find specific modulating behavior which could reflect the circular vortical structure. However, our model fails to describe the azimuthal-angle dependence of the longitudinal and transverse $Λ$ polarization, which indicates that the hydrodynamic framework with the spin Cooper-Frye formula under the assumption of thermal equilibrium of spin degree of freedom needs to be improved.

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arXiv2020

Beam Energy dependence of Light Nuclei Production in Au+Au Collisions

We study the collision energy dependence of (anti-)deuteron and (anti-)triton production in the most central Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_\mathrm{NN}}=$ 7.7, 11.5, 19.6, 27, 39, 62.4 and 200 GeV, using the nucleon coalescence model. The needed phase-space distribution of nucleons at the kinetic freeze-out is generated from a new 3D hybrid dynamical model (\texttt{iEBE-MUSIC}) by using a smooth crossover equation of state (EoS) without a QCD critical point. Our model calculations predict that the coalescence parameters of (anti-)deuteron ($B_2(d)$ and $B_2(\bar{d})$) decrease monotonically as the collision energy increases, and the light nuclei yield ratio $N_t N_p/N_d^2$ remains approximately a constant with respect to the collision energy. These calculated observables fail to reproduce the non-monotonic behavior of the corresponding data from the STAR Collaboration. Without including any effects of the critical point in our model, our results serve as the baseline predictions for the yields of light nuclei in the search for the possible QCD critical points from the experimental beam energy scan of heavy ion collisions.

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arXiv2020

Probing the partonic degrees of freedom in high multiplicity p-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=$ 5.02 TeV

We investigate the role of partonic degrees of freedom in high multiplicity p-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=$ 5.02 TeV carried out at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) by studying the production and collective flow of identified hadrons at intermediate $p_T$ via the coalescence of soft and hard partons generated from viscous hydrodynamics (VISH2+1) and the energy loss model (LBT), respectively. We find that combining the intermediate $p_T$ hadrons from the coalescence with the low $p_T$ hadrons from hydrodynamics and high $p_T$ hadrons from the jet fragmentation, our Hydro-Coal-Frag model provides a nice description of the measured $p_T$-spectra and the differential elliptic flow $v_2(p_T)$ of pions, kaons and protons over the $p_T$ range from 0 to 6 GeV. We further demonstrate the necessity of including the quark coalescence contribution to reproduce the experimentally observed approximate number of constituent quark scaling of hadron $v_2$ at intermediate $p_T$. Our results thus indicate the importance of partonic degrees of freedom and also hint at the possible formation of quark-gluon plasma in high multiplicity p+Pb collisions at the LHC.

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arXiv2020

One fluid might not rule them all

In this proceeding, we present our recent investigations on hydrodynamic collectivity in high-multiplicity proton--proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=$ 13 TeV using the VISHNU hybrid model with different initial condition models, called HIJING, super-MC and TRENTo. We find that with carefully tuned parameters, hydrodynamic simulations can give reasonable descriptions of the measured two-particle correlations. However, multi-particle single and mixed harmonics cumulants can not be described by hydrodynamics with these three initial conditions, even for the signs in a few cases. Further studies show that the non-linear response plays an important role in the hydrodynamic expansion of the p--p systems. Such an effect can change $c_2\{4\}$ from a negative value in the initial state to a positive value in the final state. The failure of the hydrodynamic description of multi-particle cumulant triggers the questions on whether the hydrodynamics can rule all collision systems, including p--p collisions at the LHC.

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arXiv2020

Robustness of principal component analysis on harmonic flow in heavy ion collisions

The principal component analysis (PCA), a mathematical tool commonly used in statistics, has recently been employed to interpret the $p_T$-dependent fluctuations of harmonic flow $v_n$ in terms of leading and subleading flow modes in heavy ion collisions. Using simulated data from AMPT and HIJING models, we show that the PCA modes are not fixed, but depend on the choice of the particle weight and the $p_T$ range. Furthermore, the shape of the leading mode is affected by the presence of non-flow correlations, and fake subleading mode may arise from the mixing of non-flow correlations with leading flow mode with a magnitude that could be larger than the genuine subleading flow mode. Therefore, the meaning of PCA modes and their relations to physical leading and subleading flow modes associated initial state eccentricities need to be further clarified/validated in realistic model simulations.

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arXiv2020

Number of constituent quark scaling of elliptic flows in high multiplicity p-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=$ 5.02 TeV

We briefly summarize our recent study on the number of constituent quark (NCQ) scaling of hadron elliptic flows in high multiplicity p-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=$ 5.02 TeV. With the inclusion of hadron production via the quark coalescence model at intermediate $p_T$, the viscous hydrodynamics at low $p_T$, and jet fragmentation at high $p_T$, our $Hydro-Coal-Frag$ model provides a nice description of the $p_T$-spectra and differential elliptic flow $v_2(p_T)$ of pions, kaons and protons over the $p_T$ range from 0 to 6 GeV. Our results demonstrate that including the quark coalescence is essential for reproducing the observed approximate NCQ scaling of hadron $v_2$ at intermediate $p_T$ in experiments, indicating strongly the existence of partonic degrees of freedom and the formation of quark-gluon plasma in high multiplicity p--Pb collisions at the LHC.

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arXiv2020

Searching for small droplets of hydrodynamic fluid in proton--proton collisions at the LHC

In this paper, we investigate the hydrodynamic collectivity in high-multiplicity events of proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=$ 13 TeV, using iEBE-VISHNU hybrid model with three different initial conditions, namely, HIJING, super-MC and TRENTo. With properly tuned parameters, hydrodynamic simulations with each initial model give reasonable descriptions of the measured two-particle correlations, including the integrated and $p_{\rm T}$-differential flow for all charged and identified hadrons. However, the hydrodynamic simulations fail to describe the negative value of the four-particle cumulant $c_2^v\{4\}$ as measured in experiments. Further investigations show that the non-linear response between the elliptic flow $v_2$ and the initial eccentricity $\varepsilon_2$ becomes significant in the small p-p systems. This leads to a large deviation from linear eccentricity scaling and generates additional flow fluctuations, which results in a positive $c_2^v\{4\}$ even with a negative $c_2^\varepsilon\{4\}$ from the initial state. We also presented the first hydrodynamic calculations of multi-particle mixed harmonic azimuthal correlations in p-p collisions, such as normalized asymmetric cumulant $nac_n\{3\}$, normalized Symmetric-Cumulant, $nsc_{2,3}\{4\}$ and $nsc_{2,4}\{4\}$. Although many qualitative features are reproduced by the hydrodynamic simulations with chosen parameters, the measured negative $nsc_{2,3}\{4\}$ cannot be reproduced. The failure of the description of negative $c_2\{4\}$ and $nsc_{2,3}\{4\}$ triggers the question on whether hydrodynamics with a fundamentally new initial state model could solve this puzzle, or hydrodynamics itself might not be the appreciated mechanism of the observed collectivity in p-p collisions at the LHC.

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arXiv2019

Universal scaling of the sigma field and net-protons from Langevin dynamics of model A

In this paper, we investigate the Kibble-Zurek scaling of the sigma field and net-protons within the framework of Langevin dynamics of model A. After determining the characteristic scales $τ_{kz},l_{kz}$ and $θ_{kz}$ and properly rescaling the traditional cumulants, we construct universal functions for the sigma field and approximate universal functions for net-protons in the critical regime, which are insensitive to the relaxation time and the chosen evolving trajectory. Besides, the oscillating behavior for the higher order cumulants of net-protons near the critical point is also drastically suppressed, which converge into approximate universal curves with these constructed Kibble-Zurek functions.

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arXiv2019

Principal Component Analysis of collective flow in Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions

In this paper, we implement Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to study the single particle distributions generated from thousands of {\tt VISH2+1} hydrodynamic simulations with an aim to explore if a machine could directly discover flow from the huge amount of data without explicit instructions from human-beings. We found that the obtained PCA eigenvectors are similar to but not identical with the traditional Fourier bases. Correspondingly, the PCA defined flow harmonics $v_n^\prime$ are also similar to the traditional $v_n$ for $n=2$ and 3, but largely deviated from the Fourier ones for $n\geq 4$. A further study on the symmetric cumulants and the Pearson coefficients indicates that mode-coupling effects are reduced for these flow harmonics defined by PCA.

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arXiv2019

Universal scaling of conserved charge in the stochastic diffusion dynamics

In this paper, we explore the Kibble-Zurek scaling of the conserved charge, using the stachastic diffusion dynamics. After determining the characteristic scales $τ_{kz}$ and $l_{kz}$ and properly rescaling the traditional correlation function and cumulant, we construct universal functions for both the two-point correlation function $C(y_1-y_2;τ)$ and second-order cumulant $K(Δy,τ)$ of the conserved charge in the critical regime, which are insensitive to the initial temperature and a parameter in the mapping between 3D Ising model and the hot QCD system near the critical point.

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