Anisotropic fluid dynamical simulations of heavy-ion collisions
Abstract
We present VAH, a (3+1)-dimensional simulation that evolves the far-from-equilibrium quark-gluon plasma produced in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions with anisotropic fluid dynamics. We solve the hydrodynamic equations on an Eulerian grid using the Kurganov-Tadmor algorithm in combination with a new adaptive Runge-Kutta method. Our numerical scheme allows us to start the simulation soon after the nuclear collision, largely avoiding the need to integrate it with a separate pre-equilibrium dynamics module. We test the code's performance by simulating on the Eulerian grid conformal and non-conformal Bjorken flow as well as conformal Gubser flow, whose (0+1)-dimensional solutions are precisely known. Finally, we compare non-conformal anisotropic hydrodynamics to second-order viscous hydrodynamics in central Pb+Pb collisions and find that the former's longitudinal flow profile responds more consistently to the fluid's gradients along the spacetime rapidity direction.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2101.02827,
title = {Anisotropic fluid dynamical simulations of heavy-ion collisions},
author = {M. McNelis and D. Bazow and U. Heinz},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2101.02827},
year = {2021}
}