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Risto Paatelainen

Publications and source records attributed to Risto Paatelainen.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

Snowmass 2021 Cosmic Frontier White Paper: The Dense Matter Equation of State and QCD Phase Transitions

Our limited understanding of the physical properties of matter at ultra-high density, high proton/neutron number asymmetry, and low temperature is presently one of the major outstanding problems in physics. As matter in this extreme state is known to only exist stably in the cores of neutron stars (NSs), complementary measurements from electromagnetic and gravitational wave astrophysical observations of NSs, combined with terrestrial laboratory constraints and further theoretical investigations, hold the promise to provide important insight into the properties of matter in a region of the quantum chromodynamics phase space that is otherwise inaccessible. This multidisciplinary endeavor imposes the following requirements for facilities and resources in the upcoming decade and beyond: * A next generation of gravitational wave detectors to uncover more double NS and neutron star-black hole mergers; * Sensitive radio telescopes to find the most massive and fastest spinning NSs; * Large-area, high-time-resolution and/or high angular resolution X-ray telescopes to constrain the NS mass-radius relation; * Suitable laboratory facilities for nuclear physics experiments to constrain the dense matter equation of state; * Funding resources for theoretical studies of matter in this regime; * The availability of modern large-scale high performance computing infrastructure. The same facilities and resources would also enable significant advances in other high-profile fields of inquiry in modern physics such as the nature of dark matter, alternative theories of gravity, nucleon superfluidity and superconductivity, as well as an array of astrophysics, including but not limited to stellar evolution, nucleosynthesis, and primordial black holes.

astro-ph.HE↗

Cold quark matter at N3LO: soft contributions

High-order perturbative calculations for thermodynamic quantities in QCD are complicated by the physics of dynamical screening that affects the soft, long-wavelength modes of the system. Here, we provide details for the evaluation of this soft contribution to the next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order (N3LO) pressure of high-density, zero-temperature quark matter (QM), complementing our accompanying paper in arXiv:2103.05658. Our calculation requires the determination of the pressure of the hard-thermal-loop (HTL) effective theory to full two-loop order at zero temperature, which we go through in considerable detail. In addition to this, we comprehensively discuss the structure of the weak-coupling expansion of the QM pressure, and lay out a roadmap towards the evaluation of the contributions missing from a full N3LO result for this quantity.

hep-ph↗

Soft interactions in cold quark matter

Accurate knowledge of the thermodynamic properties of zero-temperature, high-density quark matter plays an integral role in attempts to constrain the behavior of the dense QCD matter found inside neutron-star cores, irrespective of the phase realized inside the stars. In this Letter, we consider the weak-coupling expansion of the dense QCD equation of state and compute the next-to-next-to-next-to-leading-order contribution arising from the non-Abelian interactions among long-wavelength, dynamically screened gluonic fields. Accounting for these interactions requires an all-loop resummation, which can be performed using hard-thermal-loop (HTL) kinematic approximations. Concretely, we perform a full two-loop computation using the HTL effective theory, valid for the long-wavelength, or soft, modes. We find that the soft sector is well-behaved within cold quark matter, contrary to the case encountered at high temperatures, and find that the new contribution decreases the renormalization-scale dependence of the equation of state at high density.

hep-ph↗

Degenerate fermionic matter at N$^3$LO: Quantum Electrodynamics

We determine the pressure of a cold and dense electron gas to a nearly complete next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order (N$^3$LO) in the fine-structure constant $α_e$, utilizing a new result for the two-loop photon self-energy from a companion paper. Our result contains all infrared-sensitive contributions to the pressure at this order, including the coefficient of the $O(α_e^3 \ln α_e^{ })$ term, and leaves only a single coefficient associated with the contributions of unresummed hard momenta undetermined. Moreover, we explicitly demonstrate the complete cancellation of infrared divergences according to the effective field theory paradigm by determining part of the hard contributions at this order. Our calculation provides the first improvement to a 45-year-old milestone result and demonstrates the feasibility of the corresponding N$^3$LO calculation for cold and dense quark matter.

hep-ph↗

Soft photon propagation in a hot and dense medium to next-to-leading order

We present the first complete calculation of the soft photon self-energy to the next-to-leading order in a hot and/or dense ultrarelativistic plasma in Quantum Electrodynamics (QED). The calculation is performed within the real-time formalism utilizing dimensional regularization in $4-2ε$ dimensions, while the result is reported including explicit $O(ε)$ terms in the zero-temperature limit. This information is required to extend the perturbative calculation of the pressure of cold and dense QED matter to partial next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order in a weak-coupling expansion, reported in a companion paper. These results pave the way for a similar future calculation in Quantum Chromodynamics.

hep-ph↗

Color charge correlations in the proton at NLO: beyond geometry based intuition

Color charge correlators provide fundamental information about the proton structure. In this Letter, we evaluate numerically two-point color charge correlations in a proton on the light cone including the next-to-leading order corrections due to emission or exchange of a perturbative gluon. The non-perturbative valence quark structure of the proton is modelled in a way consistent with high-$x$ proton structure data. Our results show that the correlator exhibits startlingly non-trivial behavior at large momentum transfer or central impact parameters, and that the color charge correlation depends not only on the impact parameter but also on the relative transverse momentum of the two gluon probes and their relative angle. Furthermore, from the two-point color charge correlator, we compute the dipole scattering amplitude. Its azimuthal dependence differs significantly from a impact parameter dependent McLerran-Venugopalan model based on geometry. Our results also provide initial conditions for Balitsky-Kovchegov evolution of the dipole scattering amplitude. These initial conditions depend not only on the impact parameter and dipole size vectors, but also on their relative angle and on the light-cone momentum fraction $x$ in the target.

hep-ph↗

Azimuthal correlations in diffractive scattering at the Electron-Ion Collider

We calculate azimuthal correlations between the exclusively produced vector meson and the scattered electron in Deep Inelastic Scattering processes at the future Electron-Ion Collider (EIC). We identify "kinematical" and "intrinsic" contributions to these correlations, and show that the correlations are sensitive to the non-trivial correlations in the gluon distribution of the target. Realistic predictions at the EIC kinematics are provided using two different approaches to describe the dipole-proton interaction at relatively small $x$.

hep-ph↗

Predicting parton energy loss in small collision systems

Medium induced parton energy loss is not conclusively established neither in very peripheral heavy-ion collisions nor in proton-ion collisions. However, the standard interpretation of azimuthal momentum anisotropies in theses systems implies some partonic rescattering. The upcoming light-ion runs at the LHC provide a unique opportunity to search for parton energy loss in different systems of similar size. Here, we make predictions for the expected parton energy loss signal in the charged hadron spectra in a system size scan at LHC. We test a large set of model assumptions against the transverse momentum and centrality dependence of the charged hadron nuclear modification factor in lead-lead and xenon-xenon collisions at the LHC. We then attempt to make a model agnostic prediction for the charged hadron nuclear modification factor in oxygen-oxygen collisions.

hep-ph↗

Discovering partonic rescattering in light nucleus collisions

We demonstrate that oxygen-oxygen (OO) collisions at the LHC provide unprecedented sensitivity to parton energy loss in a system whose size is comparable to those created in very peripheral heavy-ion collisions. With leading and next-to-leading order calculations of nuclear modification factors, we show that the baseline in the absence of partonic rescattering is known with up to 2% theoretical accuracy in inclusive OO collisions. Surprisingly, a $Z$-boson normalized nuclear modification factor does not lead to higher theoretical accuracy within current uncertainties of nuclear parton distribution functions. We study a broad range of parton energy loss models and we find that the expected signal of partonic rescattering can be disentangled from the baseline by measuring charged hadron spectra in the range $20\,\text{GeV}<p_T<100\,\text{GeV}$

hep-ph↗

Impact parameter dependence of color charge correlations in the proton

The impact parameter dependence of color charge correlators in the proton is obtained from the light front formalism in light cone gauge. We include NLO corrections due to the $|qqqg\rangle$ Fock state via light-cone perturbation theory. Near the center of the proton, the $b$-dependence of the correlations is very different from a "transverse profile function". The resulting $t$-dependence of exclusive $J/Ψ$ photoproduction transitions from exponential to power law at $|t| \approx 1$ GeV$^2$. This prediction could be tested at upcoming DIS facilities or in nucleus-proton ultraperipheral collisions (UPCs).

hep-ph↗

Temperature dependence of $η/s$ of strongly interacting matter: effects of the equation of state and the parametric form of $(η/s)(T)$

We investigate the temperature dependence of the shear viscosity to entropy density ratio $η/s$ using a piecewise linear parametrization. To determine the optimal values of the parameters and the associated uncertainties, we perform a global Bayesian model-to-data comparison on Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200$ GeV and Pb+Pb collisions at $2.76$ TeV and $5.02$ TeV, using a 2+1D hydrodynamical model with the EKRT initial state. We provide three new parametrizations of the equation of state (EoS) based on contemporary lattice results and hadron resonance gas, and use them and the widely used $s95p$ parametrization to explore the uncertainty in the analysis due to the choice of the equation of state. We found that $η/s$ is most constrained in the temperature range $T\approx 150$--$220$ MeV, where, for all EoSs, $0.08 < η/s < 0.23$ when taking into account the 90% credible intervals. In this temperature range the EoS parametrization has only a small $\approx 10\%$ effect on the favored $η/s$ value, which is less than the $\approx 30\%$ uncertainty of the analysis using a single EoS parametrization. Our parametrization of $(η/s)(T)$ leads to a slightly larger minimum value of $η/s$ than the previously used parametrizations. When we constrain our parametrization to mimic the previously used parametrizations, our favored value is reduced, and the difference becomes statistically insignificant.

nucl-th↗

Jet quenching as a probe of the initial stages in heavy-ion collisions

Jet quenching provides a very flexible variety of observables which are sensitive to different energy- and time-scales of the strongly interacting matter created in heavy-ion collisions. Exploiting this versatility would make jet quenching an excellent chronometer of the yoctosecond structure of the evolution process. Here we show, for the first time, that a combination of jet quenching observables is sensitive to the initial stages of heavy-ion collisions, when the approach to local thermal equilibrium is expected to happen. Specifically, we find that in order to reproduce at the same time the inclusive particle production suppression, $R_{AA}$, and the high-$p_T$ azimuthal asymmetries, $v_2$, energy loss must be strongly suppressed for the first $\sim 0.6$ fm. This exploratory analysis shows the potential of jet observables, possibly more sophisticated than the ones studied here, to constrain the dynamics of the initial stages of the evolution.

hep-ph↗

Gluon Radiation from a classical point particle II: dense gluon fields

The goal of this paper is to extend the results of Ref. [1], where formulae were derived for gluonic radiation for a high energy nucleus colliding with a classical colored particle. In Ref. [1], we computed the amplitudes for radiation in the fragmentation region of the particle for a dilute gluonic field. In this paper, we compute the radiation by solving the fluctuation equations of the dense background field in a specific gauge which makes it simple to solve the asymptotic radiation from an initial condition immediately after the passage of the nucleus. We identify and compute two components of gluon radiation, a bulk component which extends to the central region and bremsstrahlung, which may give rise to an experimentally observable intensity peak in the target fragmentation region.

hep-ph↗

Gluon Radiation from a Classical Point Particle

We consider an initially at rest colored particle which is struck by an ultra-relativistic nucleus. The particle is treated classically both with respect to its motion and its color charge. The nucleus is treated as a sheet of colored glass within the context of the Color Glass Condensate framework. We compute both the momentum and coordinates of the struck classical particle and the emitted radiation. Our computations generalize the classic electrodynamics computation of the radiation of an accelerated charged particle to include the radiation induced by the charged gluon field. This latter contribution adds to the classic electrodynamics result and produces a gluon rapidity distribution that is roughly constant as a function of rapidity at rapidities far from the fragmentation region of the struck particles. These computations may form the basis of a first principles treatment for the initial conditions for the evolution of matter produced in the fragmentation region of asymptotically high energy collisions.

nucl-th↗

Constraining energy loss from high-$p_{\rm T}$ azimuthal asymmetries

The nuclear modification factor $R_{\rm AA}$ has been satisfactorily described by various jet quenching models. Nonetheless, all these formalisms, until very recently, underpredicted the high-$p_{\rm T}$ (> 10 GeV) elliptic flow $v_2$. We find that the simultaneous description of these observables requires to strongly suppress the quenching for the first $\sim 0.6$ fm after the collision. This shows the potential of jet quenching observables to constrain the dynamics of the initial stages of the evolution.

hep-ph↗

Temperature dependence of $η/s$: uncertainties from the equation of state

We perform a global model-to-data comparison on Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200$ GeV and Pb+Pb collisions at $2.76$ TeV and $5.02$ TeV, using a 2+1D hydrodynamics model with the EKRT initial state and a shear viscosity over entropy density ratio $(η/s)(T)$ with a linear $T$ dependence. To quantify the amount of uncertainty due to the choice of the equation of state (EoS), we compare analysis results based on four different EoSs: the well known $s95p$ parametrisation, an updated parametrisation based on the same list of particles in hadron resonance gas, but using recent lattice results for the partonic part of the EoS, and two new parametrisations based on the Particle Data Group 2016 particle list and the recent lattice results. We find that the choice of the EoS does affect the favoured minimum value of $η/s$, although within the confidence limits of the analysis. On the other hand, our analysis hardly constrains the temperature dependence of $η/s$, no matter the EoS.

hep-ph↗

Latest predictions from the EbyE NLO EKRT model

We present the latest results from the NLO pQCD + saturation + viscous hydrodynamics (EbyE NLO EKRT) model. The parameters in the EKRT saturation model are fixed by the charged hadron multiplicity in the 0-5 \% 2.76 TeV Pb+Pb collisions. The $\sqrt{s}$, $A$ and centrality dependence of the initial particle production follows then from the QCD dynamics of the model. This allows us to predict the $\sqrt{s}$ and $A$ dependence of the particle production. We show that our results are in an excellent agreement with the low-$p_T$ data from 2.76 TeV and 5.02 TeV Pb+Pb collisions at the LHC as well as with the data from the 200 GeV Au+Au collisions at RHIC. In particular, we study the centrality dependences of hadronic multiplicities, flow coefficients, and various flow correlations. Furthermore, the nuclear mass number dependence of the initial particle production and hydrodynamic evolution can be tested in the 5.44 TeV Xe+Xe collisions at the LHC. To this end, we show our predictions for charged particle multiplicities, and in particular, show how the deformations of the Xe nuclei reflect into the flow coefficients.

nucl-th↗

Extracting $\hat{q}$ in event-by-event hydrodynamics and the centrality/energy puzzle

In our analysis, we combine event-by-event hydrodynamics, within the EKRT formulation, with jet quenching -ASW Quenching Weights- to obtain high-$p_T$ $R_{\rm AA}$ for charged particles at RHIC and LHC energies for different centralities. By defining a $K$-factor that quantifies the departure of $\hat{q}$ from an ideal estimate, $K = \hat{q}/(2ε^{3/4})$, we fit the single-inclusive experimental data for charged particles. This $K$-factor is larger at RHIC than at the LHC but, surprisingly, it is almost independent of the centrality of the collision.

nucl-th↗