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Pengfei Zhuang

Publications and source records attributed to Pengfei Zhuang.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

Heavy flavors under extreme conditions in high energy nuclear collisions

Heavy flavor hadrons have long been considered as a probe of the quark gluon plasma created in high energy nuclear collisions. In this paper we review the heavy flavor properties under extreme conditions and the realization in heavy ion experiments. After a short introduction on heavy flavor properties in vacuum, we emphasize the cold and hot nuclear matter effects on heavy flavors, including shadowing effect, Cronin effect and nuclear absorption for the former and Debye screening and regeneration for the latter. Then we discuss, in the frame of transport and coalescence models, these medium induced changes in open and closed heavy flavors in nuclear collisions and the comparison with nucleon-nucleon collisions. Considering the extremely strong electromagnetic and rotational fields generated in non-central nuclear collisions, which are widely studied in recent years, we finally investigate their effects on heavy flavor production and evolution in high energy nuclear collisions.

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Sequential hadronization in heavy ion collisions

Heavy flavor supplies a chance to constrain and improve the hadronization mechanism. We have established a sequential coalescence model with charm conservation and applied it to the charmed hadron production in heavy ion collisions. The charm conservation enhances the earlier hadron production and suppresses the later production. This relative enhancement (suppression) changes significantly the ratios between charmed hadrons in heavy ion collisions.

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Mass Correction to Chiral Kinetic Equations

We study fermion mass correction to chiral kinetic equations in electromagnetic fields. Different from the chiral limit where fermion number density is the only independent distribution, the number and spin densities are coupled to each other for massive fermion systems. To the first order in $\hbar$, we derived the quantum correction to the classical on-shell condition and the Boltzmann-type transport equations. To the linear order in the fermion mass, the mass correction does not change the structure of the chiral kinetic equations and behaves like additional collision terms. While the mass correction exists already at classical level in general electromagnetic fields, it is only a first order quantum correction in the study of chiral magnetic effect.

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Shear viscosity of ultrarelativistic Boson systems in the presence of a Bose-Einstein condensate

We calculate for the first time the shear viscosity of ultrarelativistic Boson systems in the presence of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). Two different methods are used. One is the Grad's method of moments and another is the Green-Kubo relation within a kinetic transport approach. In this work we consider a Boson system with isotropic elastic collisions and a gluon system with elastic scatterings described by perturbation QCD (pQCD). The results show that the presence of a BEC lowers the shear viscosity. This effect becomes stronger for the increasing proportion of the BEC in the Boson system and is insensitive to the detail of interactions.

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Chiral vortices and pseudoscalar condensation due to rotation

We investigate the influence of rotation on the dynamical chiral symmetry breaking in strongly interacting matter. We develop a self-consistent Bogoliubov-de Gennes-like theoretical framework to study the inhomogeneous chiral condensate and the possible chiral vortex state in rotating finite-size matter in four-fermion interacting theories. We show that for sufficiently rapid rotation in $2+1$ dimensions, the ground state can be a chiral vortex state, a type of topological defect in analogy to superfluids and superconductors. The vortex state exhibits pion condensation, providing a new mechanism to realize pseudoscalar condensation in strongly interacting matter.

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Mass Correction to Chiral Kinetic Equations

We study fermion mass correction to chiral kinetic equations in electromagnetic fields. Different from the chiral limit where fermion number density is the only independent distribution, the number and spin densities are coupled to each other for massive fermion systems. To the first order in $\hbar$, we derived the quantum correction to the classical on-shell condition and the Boltzmann-type transport equations. To the linear order in the fermion mass, the mass correction does not change the structure of the chiral kinetic equations and behaves like additional collision terms. While the mass correction exists already at classical level in general electromagnetic fields, it is only a first order quantum correction in the study of chiral magnetic effect.

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Local suppression and enhancement of pairing condensate under rotation

The rotation induced inhomogeneous problem is non-trivial and inevitable. In this paper a generic framework is developed to investigate the inhomogeneous condensate in a system of fermions under the presence of rotation. It is a self-consistent method basing on a set of relativistic BdG equations solved with typical iteration algorithm. Taking the chiral condensate for example we study rotational effects numerically and discover two inhomogeneous effects, the local rotational suppression effect and centrifugal effect. They may have significant impacts on the phase structure of various kinds of matter. Several systems in different physics branches have been discussed in the paper.

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$ψ(2S)$ photoproduction in high energy nuclear collisions

We study coherent photoproduction of $ψ'$ and the subsequent suppression in high energy nuclear collisions. The hot medium effect on charmonium photoproduction is controlled by the competition between the fireball size and nuclear size. When the former is smaller than the later, the photoproduction is only slightly affected by the hot medium. We calculate the yield ratio of $ψ'$ to $J/ψ$ in semi-central Pb-Pb collisions at LHC energy, while the high $p_T$ limit is characterized by the fireball, its value in low $p_T$ limit can still reach the significant enhancement by photoproduction.

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Complete and Consistent Chiral Transport from Wigner Function Formalism

Recently there has been significant interest in understanding the macroscopic quantum transport in a many-body system of chiral fermions. A natural framework for describing such a system which is generally out of equilibrium, is the transport equation for its phase space distribution function. In this paper, we obtain a complete solution of the covariant chiral transport for massless fermions, by starting from the general Wigner function formalism and carrying out a complete and consistent semiclassical expansion up to $\hat{\mathbf{O}}(\hbar)$ order. In particular, we clarify certain subtle and confusing issues surrounding the Lorentz non-invariance and frame dependence associated with the 3D chiral kinetic theory. We prove that such frame dependence is uniquely and completely fixed by an unambiguous definition of the $\hat{\mathbf{O}}(\hbar)$ correction to the distribution function in each reference frame.

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Out-of-equilibrium chiral and $U_A(1)$ symmetry breaking in electromagnetic fields

We systematically study quantum effect on chiral and $U_A(1)$ symmetry breaking under external electromagnetic fields in the frame of equal-time Wigner function formalism. We derive the transport and constraint equations for the quark distribution functions and the chiral and pion condensates in a Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model. By taking semi-classical expansion of the equations, chiral symmetry is broken at classical level, while $U_A(1)$ symmetry breaking happens only at quantum level. Beyond quasi-particle approximation, the quark off-shell effect leads to strong oscillation for the chiral and pion condensates.

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Sequential Coalescence with Charm Conservation in High Energy Nuclear Collisions

Heavy quarks are initially produced in nuclear collisions and the number is conserved during the evolution of the system. We establish a sequential coalescence model with charm conservation and apply it to charmed hadron production at RHIC and LHC energies. The charm conservation enhances the earlier formed hadrons and reduces the later formed ones, which leads to a $D_s/D^0$ enhancement and a $Λ_c/D^0$ suppression. The mass dependence of the sequential hadron formation provides us a new tool for studying the quark-gluon plasma hadronization in high energy nuclear collisions.

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Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model in a parallel electromagnetic field

We explore the features of the $U_A(1)$ and chiral symmetry breaking of the Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model without the Kobayashi-Maskawa-'t Hooft determinant term in the presence of a parallel electromagnetic field. We show that the electromagnetic chiral anomaly can induce both finite neutral pion condensate and isospin-singlet pseudo-scalar $η$ condensate and thus modifies the chiral symmetry breaking pattern. In order to characterize the strength of the $U_A(1)$ symmetry breaking, we evaluate the susceptibility associated with the $U_A(1)$ charge. The result shows that the susceptibility contributed from the chiral anomaly is consistent with the behavior of the corresponding $η$ condensate. The spectra of the mesonic excitations are also studied.

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Out-of-Equilibrium Chiral Magnetic Effect from Chiral Kinetic Theory

Recently there has been significant interest in the macroscopic manifestation of chiral anomaly in many-body systems of chiral fermions. A notable example is the Chiral Magnetic Effect (CME). Enthusiastic efforts have been made to search for the CME in the quark-gluon plasma created in heavy ion collisions. A crucial challenge is that the extremely strong magnetic field in such collisions may last only for a brief moment and the CME current may have to occur at so early a stage that the quark-gluon matter is still far from thermal equilibrium. This thus requires modeling of the CME in an out-of-equilibrium setting. With the recently developed theoretical tool of chiral kinetic theory, we make a first phenomenological study of the CME-induced charge separation during the pre-thermal stage in heavy ion collisions. The effect is found to be very sensitive to the time dependence of the magnetic field and also influenced by the initial quark momentum spectrum as well as the relaxation time of the system evolution toward thermal equilibrium. Within the present approach, such pre-thermal charge separation is found to be modest.

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Meson properties in magnetized quark matter

We study neutral and charged meson properties in magnetic field. Taking bosolization method in a two-flavor Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model, we derive effective meson Lagrangian density with minimal coupling to the magnetic field, by employing derivative expansion for both the meson fields and Schwinger phases. We extract from the effective Lagrangian density the meson curvature, pole and screening masses. As the only Goldstone mode, the neutral pion controls the thermodynamics of the system and propagates the lang range quark interaction. The magnetic field breaks down the space symmetry, and the quark interaction region changes from a sphere in vacuum to a ellipsoid in magnetic field.

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Exotic Quantum States for Charmed Baryons at Finite Temperature

The significantly screened heavy-quark potential in hot medium provides the possibility to study exotic quantum states of three-heavy-quark systems. By solving the Schrödinger equation for a three-charm-quark system at finite temperature, we found that, there exist Borromean states which might be realized in high energy nuclear collisions, and the binding energies of the system satisfy precisely the scaling law for Efimov states in the resonance limit.

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Kinetic description of Bose-Einstein condensation with test particle simulations

We present a kinetic description of Bose-Einstein condensation for particle systems being out of thermal equilibrium, which may happen for gluons produced in the early stage of ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions. The dynamics of bosons towards equilibrium is described by a Boltzmann equation including Bose factors. To solve the Boltzmann equation with the presence of a Bose-Einstein condensate we make further developments of the kinetic transport model BAMPS (Boltzmann Approach of MultiParton Scatterings). In this work we demonstrate the correct numerical implementations by comparing the final numerical results to the expected solutions at thermal equilibrium for systems with and without the presence of Bose-Einstein condensate. In addition, the onset of the condensation in an over-populated gluon system is studied in more details. We find that both expected power-law scalings denoted by the particle and energy cascade are observed in the calculated gluon distribution function at infrared and intermediate momentum regions, respectively. Also, the time evolution of the hard scale exhibits a power-law scaling in a time window, which indicates that the distribution function is approximately self-similar during that time.

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Meson Spectral Functions at Finite Temperature and Isospin Density with Functional Renormalization Group

The pion superfluid and the corresponding Goldstone and soft modes are investigated in two-flavor quark-meson model with functional renormalization group. By solving the flow equations for the effective potential and the meson two-point functions at finite temperature and isospin density, the critical temperature for the superfluid increases sizeably in comparison with solving the flow equation for the potential only. The spectral function for the soft mode shows clearly a transition from meson gas to quark gas with increasing temperature and a crossover from BEC to BCS pairing of quarks with increasing isospin density.

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Cold and Hot Nuclear Matter Effects on Charmonium Production in p+Pb Collisions at LHC Energy

We study cold and hot nuclear matter effects on charmonium production in p+Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_\text{NN}}=5.02$ TeV in a transport approach. At the forward rapidity, the cold medium effect on all the $c\bar c$ states and the hot medium effect on the excited $c\bar c$ states only can explain well the $J/ψ$ and $ψ'$ yield and transverse momentum distribution measured by the ALICE collaboration, and we predict a significantly larger $ψ'$ $p_\text{T}$ broadening in comparison with $J/ψ$. However, we can not reproduce the $J/ψ$ and $ψ'$ data at the backward rapidity with reasonable cold and hot medium effects.

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