arXiv subjects

Zhe Xu

Publications and source records attributed to Zhe Xu.

At least 235 records · Page 13Linked to original sources

arXiv2017

Nonequilibrium photon production in partonic transport simulations

We discuss the implementation of leading-order photon production in nonequilibrium partonic transport simulations. In this framework photons are produced by microscopic scatterings, where we include the exact matrix elements of Compton scattering, quark-antiquark annihilation, and bremsstrahlung processes. We show how the hard-thermal loop inspired screening of propagators has to be modified such that the microscopic production rate agrees well with the analytically known resummed leading-order rate. We model the complete quark-gluon plasma phase of heavy-ion collisions by using the partonic transport approach called the Boltzmann approach to multiparton scatterings (BAMPS), which solves the ultrarelativistic Boltzmann equation with Monte Carlo methods. We show photon spectra and elliptic flow of photons from BAMPS and discuss nonequilibrium effects. Due to the slow quark chemical equilibration in BAMPS, the yield is lower than the results from other groups; in turn we see a strong effect from scatterings of energetic jet-like partons with the medium. This nonequilibrium photon production can dominate the thermal emission, such that the spectra are harder and the photonic elliptic flow of the quark-gluon plasma becomes negative.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2017

Magnetic field influence on the early time dynamics of heavy-ion collisions

In high energy heavy-ion collisions the magnetic field is very strong right after the nuclei penetrate each other and a non-equilibrium system of quarks and gluons builds up. Even though quarks might not be very abundant initially, their dynamics must necessarily be influenced by the Lorentz force. Employing the 3+1d partonic cascade BAMPS we show that the circular Larmor movement of the quarks leads to a strong positive anisotropic flow of quarks at very soft transverse momenta. We explore the regions where the effect is visible, and explicitly show how collisions damp the effect. As a possible application we look at photon production from the flowing non-equilibrium medium.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2017

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.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2017

Dynamical scheme for hadronization with first-order phase transition

We present a dynamical scheme for hadronization with first-order confinement phase transition. The thermodynamical conditions of phase equilibrium, the fluid velocity profile, and the dissipative effect determine the macroscopic changes of the parton volume and the corresponding hadron volume during the phase transition. The macroscopic volume changes are the basis for building up a dynamical scheme by considering microscopic transition processes from partons to hadrons and backwards. The established scheme is proved by comparing the numerical results with the analytical solutions in the case of a one-dimensional expansion of a dissipative fluid with Bjorken boost invariance. The comparisons show almost perfect agreements, which demonstrate the applicability of the introduced scheme.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2016

Census Signal Temporal Logic Inference for Multi-Agent Group Behavior Analysis

In this paper, we define a novel census signal temporal logic (CensusSTL) that focuses on the number of agents in different subsets of a group that complete a certain task specified by the signal temporal logic (STL). CensusSTL consists of an "inner logic" STL formula and an "outer logic" STL formula. We present a new inference algorithm to infer CensusSTL formulae from the trajectory data of a group of agents. We first identify the "inner logic" STL formula and then infer the subgroups based on whether the agents' behaviors satisfy the "inner logic" formula at each time point. We use two different approaches to infer the subgroups based on similarity and complementarity, respectively. The "outer logic" CensusSTL formula is inferred from the census trajectories of different subgroups. We apply the algorithm in analyzing data from a soccer match by inferring the CensusSTL formula for different subgroups of a soccer team.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2015

Robust scatter correction method for cone-beam CT using an interlacing-slit plate

Cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) has been widely used in medical imaging and industrial nondestructive testing, but the presence of scattered radiation will cause significant reduction of image quality. In this article, a robust scatter correction method for CBCT using an interlacing-slit plate (ISP) is carried out for convenient practice. Firstly, a Gaussian filtering method is proposed to compensate the missing data of the inner scatter image, and simultaneously avoid too-large values of calculated inner scatter and smooth the inner scatter field. Secondly, an interlacing-slit scan without detector gain correction is carried out to enhance the practicality and convenience of the scatter correction method. Finally, a denoising step for scatter-corrected projection images is added in the process flow to control the noise amplification. The experimental results show that the improved method can not only make the scatter correction more robust and convenient, but also achieve a good quality of scatter-corrected slice images.

physics.med-ph↗

arXiv2015

Part-Stacked CNN for Fine-Grained Visual Categorization

In the context of fine-grained visual categorization, the ability to interpret models as human-understandable visual manuals is sometimes as important as achieving high classification accuracy. In this paper, we propose a novel Part-Stacked CNN architecture that explicitly explains the fine-grained recognition process by modeling subtle differences from object parts. Based on manually-labeled strong part annotations, the proposed architecture consists of a fully convolutional network to locate multiple object parts and a two-stream classification network that en- codes object-level and part-level cues simultaneously. By adopting a set of sharing strategies between the computation of multiple object parts, the proposed architecture is very efficient running at 20 frames/sec during inference. Experimental results on the CUB-200-2011 dataset reveal the effectiveness of the proposed architecture, from both the perspective of classification accuracy and model interpretability.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2015

Glueballs amass at RHIC and LHC Colliders! - The early quarkless 1st order phase transition at $T=270$ MeV - from pure Yang-Mills glue plasma to GlueBall-Hagedorn states

The early stage of high multiplicity pp, pA and AA collider is represented by a nearly quarkless, hot, deconfined pure gluon plasma. According to pure Yang-Mills Lattice Gauge Theory, this hot pure glue matter undergoes, at a high temperature, $T_c = 270$ MeV, a first order phase transition into a confined Hagedorn-GlueBall fluid. These new scenario should be characterized by a suppression of high $p_T$ photons and dileptons, baryon suppression and enhanced strange meson production. We propose to observe this newly predicted class of events at LHC and RHIC.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2015

Influence of multiple in-medium scattering processes on the momentum imbalance of reconstructed di-jets

Experimental data measured in sqrt(s)=2.76 TeV Pb+Pb collisions at the LHC show a significant enhancement of events with an unbalanced pair of reconstructed jet momenta in comparison with p+p collisions. This enhancement of momentum imbalance is supposed to be caused by the different momentum loss of the initial back-to-back di-partons by scatterings within the created dense medium. For investigating the underlying partonic momentum loss we employ the on-shell transport model BAMPS (Boltzmann Approach for Multi-Parton Scattering) for full heavy-ion collisions, which numerically solves the 3+1D Boltzmann equation based on 2->2 as well as inelastic 2<->3 scattering processes, together with PYTHIA initial state conditions for the parton showers. Due to the employed test-particle approach jet reconstruction within BAMPS events is not trivial. We introduce a method that nevertheless allows the microscopic simulation of the full evolution of the shower particles, recoiled medium particles, and the underlying bulk medium in one common microscopic framework. With this method it is possible to investigate the role of the medium recoil for the momentum imbalance A_J while using well-established background subtraction algorithms. Due to the available particle information in configuration as well as momentum space within BAMPS, it is additionally possible to reproduce the entire evolution of the reconstructed jets within the medium. With this information we investigate the sensitivity of the jet momentum loss from the difference in the partonic in-medium path lengths.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2015

Thermalization of gluons with Bose-Einstein condensation

We study the thermalization of gluons far from thermal equilibrium in relativistic kinetic theory. The initial distribution of gluons is assumed to resemble that in the early stage of ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions. Only elastic scatterings in static, nonexpanding gluonic matter are considered. At first we show that the occurrence of condensation in the limit of vanishing particle mass requires a general constraint for the scattering matrix element. Then the thermalization of gluons with Bose-Einstein condensation is demonstrated in a transport calculation. We see a continuously increasing overpopulation of low energy gluons, followed by a decrease to the equilibrium distribution, when the condensation occurs. The times of the completion of the gluon condensation and of the entropy production are calculated. These times scale inversely with the energy density.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2015

Magnetic Field Effect on Charmonium Production in High Energy Nuclear Collisions

It is important to understand the strong external magnetic field generated at the very beginning of high energy nuclear collisions. We study the effect of the magnetic field on the charmonium yield and anisotropic distribution in Pb+Pb collisions at the LHC energy. The time dependent Schrödinger equation is employed to describe the motion of $c\bar{c}$ pairs. We compare our model prediction of non- collective anisotropic parameter $v_2$ of $J/ψ$s with CMS data at high transverse momentum. This is the first attempt to measure the magnetic field in high energy nuclear collisions.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2014

Electric conductivity of the quark-gluon plasma investigated using a perturbative QCD based parton cascade

Electric conductivity is sensitive to effective cross sections among the particles of the partonic medium. We investigate the electric conductivity of a hot plasma of quarks and gluons, solving the relativistic Boltzmann equation. In order to extract this transport coefficient, we employ the Green-Kubo formalism and, independently, a method motivated by the classical definition of electric conductivity. To this end we evaluate the static electric diffusion current upon the influence of an electric field. Both methods give identical results. For the first time, we obtain numerically the Drude electric conductivity formula for an ultrarelativistic gas of quarks and gluons employing constant isotropic binary cross sections. Furthermore, we extract the electric conductivity for a system of massless quarks and gluons including screened binary and inelastic, radiative $2\leftrightarrow 3$ perturbative QCD scattering. Comparing with recent lattice results, we find an agreement in the temperature dependence of the conductivity.

nucl-th↗

arXiv2014

Elastic and radiative heavy quark interactions in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions

Elastic and radiative heavy quark interactions with light partons are studied with the partonic transport description BAMPS (Boltzmann Approach to MultiParton Scatterings). After calculating the cross section of radiative processes for finite masses in the improved Gunion-Bertsch approximation and verifying this calculation by comparing to the exact result, we study elastic and radiative heavy quark energy loss in a static medium of quarks and gluons. Furthermore, the full 3+1D space-time evolution of gluons, light quarks, and heavy quarks in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions at the BNL Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) and the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are calculated with BAMPS including elastic and radiative heavy flavor interactions. Treating light and heavy particles on the same footing in the same framework, we find that the experimentally measured nuclear modification factor of charged hadrons and D mesons at the LHC can be simultaneously described. In addition, we calculate the heavy flavor evolution with an improved screening procedure from hard-thermal-loop calculations and confront the results with experimental data of the nuclear modification factor and the elliptic flow of heavy flavor particles at RHIC and LHC.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2014

Momentum imbalance of D mesons in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions at LHC

As a new observable for heavy flavor correlations the momentum imbalance $A_D$ of D mesons is proposed. It is defined analogously to the jet momentum imbalance $A_J$ of fully reconstructed jets. However, since D mesons are flavor tagged particles, no jet reconstruction is necessary. $A_D$ quantifies the influence of the medium created in heavy-ion collisions on correlated charm pairs. We present results with the partonic transport model Boltzmann Approach to MultiParton Scatterings (BAMPS), which describes well the nuclear modification factor and elliptic flow of all heavy flavor particles at RHIC and LHC. The $A_D$ distribution in heavy-ion collisions at LHC is shifted to larger values of $A_D$ compared to proton-proton collisions. We argue that this shift is due to medium effects and can be explained partially by a path length imbalance of charm pairs and partially by momentum fluctuations in the initial charm pair distribution.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2014

Point spread function modeling and images restoration for cone-beam CT

X-ray cone-beam computed tomography (CT) has the notable features such as high efficiency and precision, and is widely used in the fields of medical imaging and industrial non-destructive testing, but the inherent imaging degradation reduces the quality of CT images. Aimed at the problems of projection images degradation and restoration in cone-beam CT, a point spread function (PSF) modeling method is proposed firstly. The general PSF model of cone-beam CT is established, and based on it, the PSF under arbitrary scanning conditions can be calculated directly for projection images restoration without the additional measurement, which greatly improved the application convenience of cone-beam CT. Secondly, a projection images restoration algorithm based on pre-filtering and pre-segmentation is proposed, which can make the edge contours in projection images and slice images clearer after restoration, and control the noise in the equivalent level to the original images. Finally, the experiments verified the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed methods.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2014

Medium Effects on Charmonium Production at ultrarelativistic energies available at the CERN Large Haron Collider

We investigate with a transport approach the cold and hot nuclear matter effects on the charmonium transverse momentum distributions in relativistic heavy ion collisions. The newly defined nuclear modification factor $r_{AA}=\langle p_{T}^2\rangle_{AA}/\langle p_{T}^2\rangle_{pp}$ and elliptic flow $v_2$ for $J/ψ$ are sensitive to the nature of the hot medium and the thermalization of heavy quarks. From SPS through RHIC to LHC colliding energies, we observe dramatic changes in the centrality dependence of $r_{AA}$. We find that at LHC energy, the finally observed charmonia are dominated by the regeneration from thermalized heavy quarks.

nucl-th↗

arXiv2014

Shear viscosity of an ultrarelativistic Boltzmann gas with isotropic inelastic scattering processes

We derive an analytic expression for the shear viscosity of an ultra-relativistic gas in presence of both elastic $2\to 2$ and inelastic $2\leftrightarrow 3$ processes with isotropic differential cross sections. The derivation is based on the entropy principle and Grad's approximation for the off-equilibrium distribution function. The obtained formula relates the shear viscosity coefficient $η$ to the total cross sections $σ_{22}$ and $σ_{23}$ of the elastic resp. inelastic processes. The values of shear viscosity extracted using the Green-Kubo formula from kinetic transport calculations are shown to be in excellent agreement with the analytic results which demonstrates the validity of the derived formula.

hep-th↗

arXiv2014

Elliptic flow and nuclear modification factor in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions within a partonic transport model

The quark gluon plasma produced in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions exhibits remarkable features. It behaves like a nearly perfect liquid with a small shear viscosity to entropy density ratio and leads to the quenching of highly energetic particles. We show that both effects can be understood for the first time within one common framework. Employing the parton cascade Boltzmann Approach to Multi-Parton Scatterings (BAMPS), the microscopic interactions and the space-time evolution of the quark gluon plasma are calculated by solving the relativistic Boltzmann equation. Based on cross sections obtained from perturbative QCD with explicitly taking the running coupling into account, we calculate the nuclear modification factor and elliptic flow in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions. With only one single parameter associated with coherence effects of medium-induced gluon radiation, the experimental data of both observables can be understood on a microscopic level. Furthermore, we show that perturbative QCD interactions with a running coupling lead to a sufficiently small shear viscosity to entropy density ratio of the quark gluon plasma, which provides a microscopic explanation for the observations stated by hydrodynamic calculations.

hep-ph↗