English

Nearly isentropic flow at sizeable $\eta/s$

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2018-07-09 v4 High Energy Physics - Experiment Nuclear Experiment Nuclear Theory

Abstract

Non-linearities in the harmonic spectra of hadron-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions provide evidence for the dynamical response to azimuthal spatial eccentricities. Here, we demonstrate within the framework of transport theory that even the mildest interaction correction to a picture of free-streaming particle distributions, namely the inclusion of one perturbatively weak interaction ("one-hit dynamics"), will generically give rise to all observed linear and non-linear structures. We further argue that transport theory naturally accounts within the range of its validity for realistic signal sizes of the linear and non-linear response coefficients observed in azimuthal momentum anisotropies with a large mean free path of the order of the system size in peripheral (50%\sim 50 \% centrality) PbPb or central pPb collisions. The shear viscosity to entropy density ratio η/s\eta/s of such a transport theory is approximately an order of magnitude larger than that of an almost perfect fluid. The phenomenological success of transport simulations thus challenges the perfect fluid paradigm of ultra-relativistic nucleus-nucleus and hadron-nucleus collisions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1803.02072,
  title  = {Nearly isentropic flow at sizeable $\eta/s$},
  author = {Aleksi Kurkela and Urs Achim Wiedemann and Bin Wu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1803.02072},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

8 pages, 5 figures, minor changes, typos corrected, published version

R2 v1 2026-06-23T00:43:27.311Z