English

Moving forward to constrain the shear viscosity of QCD matter

Nuclear Theory 2016-06-01 v1 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology Nuclear Experiment

Abstract

We demonstrate that measurements of rapidity differential anisotropic flow in heavy ion collisions can constrain the temperature dependence of the shear viscosity to entropy density ratio {\eta}/s of QCD matter. Comparing results from hydrodynamic calculations with experimental data from RHIC, we find evidence for a small {\eta}/s \approx 0.04 in the QCD cross-over region and a strong temperature dependence in the hadronic phase. A temperature independent {\eta}/s is disfavored by the data. We further show that measurements of the event-by-event flow as a function of rapidity can be used to independently constrain the initial state fluctuations in three dimensions and the temperature dependent transport properties of QCD matter.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1512.01538,
  title  = {Moving forward to constrain the shear viscosity of QCD matter},
  author = {Gabriel Denicol and Akihiko Monnai and Bjoern Schenke},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1512.01538},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

6 pages, 5 figures