English

Bjorken flow attractors with transverse dynamics

Nuclear Theory 2021-12-21 v3 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology Fluid Dynamics

Abstract

In the context of the longitudinally boost-invariant Bjorken flow with transverse expansion, we use three different numerical methods to analyze the emergence of attractor solutions in an ideal gas of massless particles exhibiting constant shear viscosity to entropy density ratio η/s\eta / s. The fluid energy density is initialized using a Gaussian profile in the transverse plane, while the ratio χ=PL/PT\chi = \mathcal{P}_L / \mathcal{P}_T between the longitudinal and transverse pressures is set at initial time τ0\tau_0 to a constant value χ0\chi_0 throughout the system employing the Romatschke-Strickland distribution. We introduce the hydrodynamization time δτH=(τHτ0)/τ0\delta \tau_H = (\tau_H - \tau_0)/ \tau_0 based on the time τH\tau_H when the standard deviation σ(χ)\sigma(\chi) of a family of solutions with different χ0\chi_0 reaches a minimum value at the point of maximum convergence of the solutions. In the 0+1D0+1{\rm D} setup, δτH\delta \tau_H exhibits scale invariance, being a function only of (η/s)/(τ0T0)(\eta / s) / (\tau_0 T_0). With transverse expansion, we find a similar δτH\delta \tau_H computed with respect to the local initial temperature, T0(r)T_0(r). We highlight the transition between the regimes where the longitudinal and transverse expansions dominate. We find that the hydrodynamization time required for the attractor solution to be reached increases with the distance from the origin, as expected based on the properties of the 0+1D0+1{\rm D} system defined by the local initial conditions. We argue that hydrodynamization is predominantly the effect of the longitudinal expansion, being significantly influenced by the transverse dynamics only for small systems or for large values of η/s\eta / s.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2102.11785,
  title  = {Bjorken flow attractors with transverse dynamics},
  author = {Victor E. Ambrus and Sergiu Busuioc and Jan A. Fotakis and Kai Gallmeister and Carsten Greiner},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2102.11785},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

Accepted version. 20 pages, 11 figures, 1 table

R2 v1 2026-06-23T23:26:39.233Z