arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Wojciech Florkowski.
We briefly review the basic features of a new framework for relativistic perfect fluid hydrodynamics of polarized systems consisting of particles with spin one half. Using this approach we numerically study the stability of a stationary vortex-like solution, representing global equilibrium of a rotating medium.
We critically compare thermodynamic and kinetic approaches, that have been recently used to study relations between the spin polarization and fluid vorticity in systems consisting of spin-one-half particles. The thermodynamic approach refers to general properties of global thermal equilibrium with a rigid-like rotation and demonstrates that the spin-polarization and thermal-vorticity tensors are equal. On the other hand, the kinetic approach uses the concept of the Wigner function and its semi-classical expansion. In most of the works done so far, the Wigner functions satisfy kinetic equations with a vanishing collision term. We show that this assumption restricts significantly applicability of such frameworks and, in contrast to many claims found in the literature, does not allow for drawing any conclusions regarding the relation between the thermal-vorticity and spin-polarization tensors, except for the fact that the two should be constant in global equilibrium. We further show how the kinetic-theory equations including spin degrees of freedom can be used to formulate a hydrodynamic framework for particles with spin. We define hydrodynamic equations starting separately from the formulation by de~Groot, van~Leeuwen, and van~Weert and from the canonical formalism. In the former case the energy-momentum tensor is symmetric and the spin tensor is conserved, while in the later case the energy-momentum tensor is not symmetric and the spin tensor is not conserved. Nevertheless, in the two cases the total angular momentum is always conserved. Interestingly, the two approaches are connected by the pseudo-gauge transformation, which we explicitly define.
We apply the convection stability criterion to a fluid in global thermodynamic equilibrium with a rigid rotation or with a constant acceleration along the streamlines. Different equations of state describing strongly interacting matter are considered and for each of them the analysed system is found to be stable with respect to convection. This finding brings new evidence for physical relevance of non-static global equilibrium states. Our results can be directly used for other similar media to check their convective stability.
Using the conservation laws for charge, energy, momentum, and angular momentum, we derive hydrodynamic equations for the charge density, local temperature, and fluid velocity, as well as for the spin tensor, starting from local equilibrium distribution functions for particles and antiparticles with spin 1/2. The resulting set of differential equations extend the standard picture of perfect-fluid hydrodynamics with a conserved entropy current in a minimal way. This framework can be used in space-time analyzes of the evolution of spin and polarization in various physical systems including high-energy nuclear collisions. We demonstrate that a stationary vortex, which exhibits vorticity-spin alignment, corresponds to a special solution of the spin-hydrodynamical equations.
A global equilibrium state of a spin polarized fluid that undergoes constant acceleration along the stream lines is described as a solution of recently introduced perfect-fluid hydrodynamic equations with spin 1/2.
We discuss a manifestly covariant formulation of ideal relativistic magnetohydrodynamics, which has been recently used in astrophysical and heavy-ion contexts, and compare it to other similar frameworks. We show that the covariant equations allow for stationary vortex-like solutions that represent generalizations of the perfect-fluid solutions describing systems in global equilibrium with rotation. Such solutions are further used to demonstrate that inhomogeneous Maxwell equations, implicitly included in the covariant framework, may generate very large electric charge densities. This suggests that solutions of the covariant formulation may violate in some cases the assumptions of standard ideal magnetohydrodynamics. Furthermore, we show that the flow four-vector and conserved currents obtained in the covariant approach are usually not related to each other, which hinders kinetic-theory interpretation of the obtained results.
Recently advocated expressions for the phase-space dependent spin-1/2 density matrices of particles and antiparticles are analyzed in detail and reduced to the forms linear in the Dirac spin operator. This allows for a natural determination of the spin polarization vectors of particles and antiparticles by the trace of products of the spin density matrices and the Pauli matrices. We demonstrate that the total spin polarization vector obtained in this way agrees with the Pauli-Lubanski four-vector, constructed from an appropriately chosen spin tensor and boosted to the particle rest frame. We further show that several forms of the spin tensor used in the literature give the same Pauli-Lubanski four-vector.
Recent theoretical developments of relativistic hydrodynamics applied to ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions are briefly reviewed. In particular, the concept of a formal gradient expansion is discussed, which is a tool to compare different hydrodynamic models with underlying microscopic theories.
Anisotropic-hydrodynamics framework is used to describe a mixture of quark and gluon fluids. The effects of quantum statistics, finite quark mass, and finite baryon number density are taken into account. The results of anisotropic hydrodynamics are compared with exact solutions of the coupled kinetic equations for quarks and gluons in the relaxation time approximation. The overall very good agreement between the hydrodynamic and kinetic-theory results is found.
The success of relativistic hydrodynamics as an essential part of the phenomenological description of heavy-ion collisions at RHIC and the LHC has motivated a significant body of theoretical work concerning its fundamental aspects. Our review presents these developments from the perspective of the underlying microscopic physics, using the language of quantum field theory, relativistic kinetic theory, and holography. We discuss the gradient expansion, the phenomenon of hydrodynamization, as well as several models of hydrodynamic evolution equations, highlighting the interplay between collective long-lived and transient modes in relativistic matter. Our aim to provide a unified presentation of this vast subject -- which is naturally expressed in diverse mathematical languages -- has also led us to include several new results on the large-order behaviour of the hydrodynamic gradient~expansion.
Kinetic equations for quarks and gluons are solved numerically in the relaxation time approximation for the case of one-dimensional boost-invariant geometry. Quarks are massive and described by the Fermi-Dirac statistics, while gluons are massless and obey Bose-Einstein statistics. The conservation laws for the baryon number, energy, and momentum lead to two Landau matching conditions which specify the coupling between the quark and gluon sectors and determine the proper-time dependence of the effective temperature and baryon chemical potential of the system. The numerical results illustrate how a non-equlibrium mixture of quarks and gluons approaches hydrodynamic regime described by the Navier-Stokes equations with appropriate forms of the kinetic coefficients. The shear viscosity of a mixture is the sum of the shear viscosities of quark and gluon components, while the bulk viscosity is given by the formula known for a gas of quarks, however, with the thermodynamic variables characterising the mixture. Thus, we find that massless gluons contribute in a non-trivial way to the bulk viscosity of a mixture, provided quarks are massive. We further observe the hydrodynamization effect which takes place earlier in the shear sector than in the bulk one. The numerical studies of the ratio of the longitudinal and transverse pressures show, to a good approximation, that it depends on the ratio of the relaxation and proper times only. This behaviour is connected with the existence of an attractor solution for conformal systems.
A new hydrodynamic framework for particles with spin 1/2, based solely on the conservation laws for charge, energy, momentum and angular momentum, is discussed.
The one-dimensional non-boost-invariant evolution of the quark-gluon plasma, presumably produced during the early stages of heavy-ion collisions, is analyzed within the frameworks of viscous and anisotropic hydrodynamics. We neglect transverse dynamics and assume homogeneous conditions in the transverse plane but, differently from Bjorken expansion, we relax longitudinal boost invariance in order to study the rapidity dependence of various hydrodynamical observables. We compare the results obtained using several formulations of second-order viscous hydrodynamics with a recent approach to anisotropic hydrodynamics, which treats the large initial pressure anisotropy in a non-perturbative fashion. The results obtained with second-order viscous hydrodynamics depend on the particular choice of the second-order terms included, which suggests that the latter should be included in the most complete way. The results of anisotropic hydrodynamics and viscous hydrodynamics agree for the central hot part of the system, however, they differ at the edges where the approach of anisotropic hydrodynamics helps to control the undesirable growth of viscous corrections observed in standard frameworks.
We compute the gradient expansion for anisotropic hydrodynamics. The results are compared with the corresponding expansion of the underlying kinetic-theory model with the collision term treated in the relaxation time approximation. We find that a recent formulation of anisotropic hydrodynamics based on an anisotropic matching principle yields the first three terms of the gradient expansion in agreement with those obtained for the kinetic theory. This gives further support for this particular hydrodynamic model as a good approximation of the kinetic-theory approach. We further find that the gradient expansion of anisotropic hydrodynamics is an asymptotic series, and the singularities of the analytic continuation of its Borel transform indicate the presence of non-hydrodynamic modes.
We investigate dynamic properties of a plasma whose constituents are confining gluons resulting from the Gribov quantization. In a static formulation, this system reproduces qualitatively the pure-glue equation of state and thereby encodes crucial features of the phase transition. The dynamic description proposed in this work allows us to study non-equilibrium transport phenomena with the inclusion of confinement effects. In particular, we determine the non-equilibrium behaviour of the interaction measure (trace anomaly) and find the form of the bulk viscosity coefficient. The latter may be used in phenomenological applications to heavy-ion collisions.
We study dynamic features of a plasma consisting of gluons whose infrared dynamics is improved by the Gribov-Zwanziger quantization. This approach embodies essential features of color confinement which set the plasma apart from conventional quasiparticle systems in several aspects. Our study focusses on a boost-invariant expansion for in- and out-of-equilibrium settings, which at late times can be characterized by the sound velocity, $c_s$, and the shear, $η$, and bulk, $ζ$, viscosities. We obtain explicit expressions for the transport coefficients $η$ and $ζ$ and check that they are consistent with the numerical solutions of the kinetic equation. At high temperature, keeping both the Gribov parameter and the relaxation time constant, we find a scaling $ζ/η\propto 1/3 - c_s^2$ which manifests strong breaking of conformal symmetry in contrast to the case of weakly coupled plasmas.
Blast-wave model is applied to describe the Hanbury-Brown--Twiss (HBT) radii of pionic systems produced in pp collisions at the LHC energies.
We introduce a generalised relaxation-time-approximation form of the collision term in the Boltzmann kinetic equation that allows for using different relaxation times for elastic and inelastic collisions. The efficacy of the proposed framework is demonstrated with the numerical calculations that describe systems with different relations between the two relaxation times and the evolution time of the system.