arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Raju Venugopalan.
We discuss some recent developments towards a quantitative understanding of the production and early-time evolution of bulk quark-gluon matter in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions.
High parton densities in ultra-relativistic nuclear collisions suggest a description of these collisions wherein the high energy nuclear wavefunctions and the initial stages of the nuclear collision are dominated by classical fields. This underlying paradigm can be significantly improved by including quantum fluctuations around the classical background fields. One class of these contributes to the energy evolution of multi-parton correlators in the nuclear wavefunctions. Another dominant class of unstable quantum fluctuations grow rapidly with proper time $τ$ after the collision. These secular terms appear at each loop order; the leading contributions can be resummed to all loop orders to obtain expressions for final state observables. The all-order result can be expressed in terms of the spectrum of fluctuations on the initial proper time surface. We compute, in $A^τ=0$ gauge, the essential elements in this fluctuation spectrum--the small quantum fluctuation modes in the classical background field. With our derivation in QCD, we have all the ingredients to compute inclusive quantities in heavy ion collisions at early times including i) all--order leading logs in Bjorken $x_{1,2}$ of the two nuclei, ii) all strong multiple scattering contributions, and iii) all-order leading secular terms. In the simpler analogous formalism for a scalar $ϕ^4$ theory, numerical analysis of the behavior of the energy-momentum tensor is strongly suggestive of early hydrodynamic flow in the system. In QCD, in addition to studying the possible early onset of hydrodynamic behavior, additional important applications of our results include a) the computation of sphaleron transitions off-equilibrium, and b) "jet quenching", or medium modification of parton spectra, in strong color fields at early times.
We summarize recent significant progress in the development of a first-principles formalism to describe the formation and evolution of matter in very high energy heavy ion collisions. The key role of quantum fluctuations both before and after a collision is emphasized. Systematic computations are now feasible to address early time dynamics essential to quantifying properties of strongly interacting quark-gluon matter.
Many-body QCD in leading high energy Regge asymptotics is described by the Balitsky-JIMWLK hierarchy of renormalization group equations for the x evolution of multi-point Wilson line correlators. These correlators are universal and ubiquitous in final states in deeply inelastic scattering and hadronic collisions. For instance, recently measured di-hadron correlations at forward rapidity in deuteron-gold collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) are sensitive to four and six point correlators of Wilson lines in the small x color fields of the dense nuclear target. We evaluate these correlators numerically by solving the functional Langevin equation that describes the Balitsky-JIMWLK hierarchy. We compare the results to mean-field Gaussian and large N_c approximations used in previous phenomenological studies. We comment on the implications of our results for quantitative studies of multi-gluon final states in high energy QCD.
In ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions, the matter formed shortly after the collision is a dense, out of equilibrium, system of gluons characterized by a semi-hard momentum scale $Q_{\rm s}$. Simple power counting arguments indicate that this system is over-occupied: the gluon occupation number is parametrically large when compared to a system in thermal equilibrium with the same energy density. On short time scales, soft elastic scatterings tend to drive the system towards the formation of a Bose--Einstein condensate that contains a large fraction of the gluons while contributing little to the energy density. The lifetime and existence of this condensate depends on whether inelastic processes, that occur on the same time scale as the elastic ones, preferably increase or decrease the number of gluons. During this overpopulated stage, and all the way to thermalization, the system behaves as a strongly interacting fluid, even though the elementary coupling constant is small. We argue that while complete isotropization may never be reached, the system may yet evolve for a long time with a fixed anisotropy between average longitudinal and transverse momenta.
Unintegrated gluon distributions sensitive to the transverse spatial distribution of gluons in the proton are extracted from data on exclusive and diffractive final states at HERA in the dipole approach. These unintegrated gluon distributions can be used to compute inclusive hadron production in p+p collisions at the LHC. In this paper, we consider a number of saturation models with differering dynamical assumptions that give good fits to the available HERA data. We apply these models to study the rapidity and transverse momentum dependence of the LHC data up to $\sqrt{s} = 7$ TeV. We examine the sensitivity of these results to parameters that are not constrained by the HERA data and comment on similarities and differences with previous work. We compute the n-particle inclusive multiplicity distribution and show that the LHC p+p results are in agreement with predictions for multi-particle production in the Color Glass Condensate approach. This result has significant ramifications for the interpretation of multi-particle correlations in high multiplicity events at the LHC.
Dipole models based on various saturation scenarios provide reasonable fits to small-x DIS inclusive, diffractive and exclusive data from HERA. Proton un-integrated gluon distributions extracted from such fits are employed in a $k_\bot$-factorization framework to calculate inclusive gluon distributions at various energies. The n-particle multiplicity distribution predicted in the Glasma flux tube approach shows good agreement with data over a wide range of energies. Hadron inclusive transverse momentum distributions expressed in terms of the saturation scale demonstrate universal behavior over a wider kinematic range systematically with increasing center of mass energies.
We discuss a standard model of heavy ion collisions that has emerged both from the experimental results of the RHIC program and associated theoretical developments. We comment briefly on the impact of early results of the LHC program on this picture. We consider how this standard model of heavy ion collisions could be solidified or falsified in future experiments at RHIC, the LHC and a future Electron-Ion Collider.
We show that the key features of the CMS result on the ridge correlation seen for high multiplicity events in sqrt(s)=7TeV proton-proton collisions at the LHC can be understood in the Color Glass Condensate framework of high energy QCD. The same formalism underlies the explanation of the ridge events seen in A+A collisions at RHIC, albeit it is likely that flow effects may enhance the magnitude of the signal in the latter.
We discuss results for n-gluon correlations that form the basis of the Glasma flux tube picture of early times in heavy ion collisions. Our formalism is valid to all orders in perturbation theory at leading logarithmic accuracy in x and includes both QCD bremsstrahlung and the many body screening and recombination effects that are important at large parton densities. Long range rapidity correlations, as seen in the near-side ridge in heavy ion collisions, are a chronometer of these early time strong color field dynamics. They also contain information on how radial flow develops in heavy ion collisions.
We compute three particle correlations in the Glasma flux tube model of high energy heavy ion collisions. We obtain a simple geometrical picture of these correlations; when convoluted with final state radial flow, it results in distinct predictions for the near side three particle correlation in central heavy ion collisions.
These introductory lectures present a broad overview of the physics of high parton densities in QCD and its application to our understanding of the early time dynamics in heavy ion collisions.
When two sheets of Color Glass Condensate collide in a high energy heavy ion collision, they form matter with very high energy densities called the Glasma. We describe how this matter is formed, its remarkable properties and its relevance for understanding thermalization of the Quark Gluon Plasma in heavy ion collisions. Long range rapidity correlations contained in the near side ridge measured in heavy ion collisions may allow one to directly infer the properties of the Glasma.
We investigate the consequences of long range rapidity correlations in the Glasma. Particles produced locally in the transverse plane are correlated by approximately boost invariant flux tubes of longitudinal color electric and magnetic fields that are formed when two sheets of Colored Glass Condensate pass through one another, each acquiring a modified color charge density in the collision. We argue that such long range rapidity correlations persist during the evolution of the Quark Gluon Plasma formed later in the collision. When combined with transverse flow, these correlations reproduce many of the features of the recently observed ridge events in heavy ion collisions at RHIC.
We derive a high energy factorization theorem for inclusive gluon production in A+A collisions. Our factorized formula resums i) all order leading logarithms (g^2 \ln(1/x_{1,2}))^n of the incoming partons momentum fractions, and ii) all contributions (g ρ_{1,2})^n that are enhanced when the color charge densities in the two nuclei are of order of the inverse coupling-- ρ_{1,2}\sim g^{-1}. The resummed inclusive gluon spectrum can be expressed as a convolution of gauge invariant distributions W[ρ_{1,2}] from each of the nuclei with the leading order gluon number operator. These distributions are shown to satisfy the JIMWLK equation describing the evolution of nuclear wavefunctions with rapidity. As a by-product, we demonstrate that the JIMWLK Hamiltonian can be derived entirely in terms of retarded light cone Green's functions without any ambiguities in their pole prescriptions. We comment on the implications of our results for understanding the Glasma produced at early times in A+A collisions at collider energies.
In this series of three lectures, we discuss several aspects of high energy scattering among hadrons in Quantum Chromodynamics. The first lecture is devoted to a description of the parton model, Bjorken scaling and the scaling violations due to the evolution of parton distributions with the transverse resolution scale. The second lecture describes parton evolution at small momentum fraction x, the phenomenon of gluon saturation and the Color Glass Condensate (CGC). In the third lecture, we present the application of the CGC to the study of high energy hadronic collisions, with emphasis on nucleus-nucleus collisions. In particular, we provide the outline of a proof of high energy factorization for inclusive gluon production.
We discuss the empirical evidence for a universal Color Glass Condensate and outline prospects for further studies at future colliders. Some ramifications for initial conditions in heavy ion collisions are pointed out.
We discuss the relation between multi-particle production in the Glasma at next-to-leading order and the physics of plasma instabilities.