Related papers: Chemical Equilibration in Hadronic Collisions
We have considered the equilibration in a relativistic heavy ion collision using our transport model. We applied periodic boundary conditions to close the system in a box. We found that the thermal equilibration takes place in the first…
Collisions of heavy nuclei at very high energies offer the exciting possibility of experimentally exploring the phase transformation from hadronic to partonic degrees of freedom which is predicted to occur at several times normal nuclear…
We address the issue of the degree of equilibrium achieved in a high energy heavy-ion collision. Specifically, we explore the consequences of incomplete strangeness chemical equilibrium. This is achieved over a volume V of the order of the…
Quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is the theory of strong interactions of quarks and gluons collectively called partons, the basic constituents of all nuclear matter. Its non-abelian character manifests in nature in the form of two remarkable…
The rapid thermalization of quarks and gluons in the initial stages of relativistic heavy-ion collisions is treated using analytic solutions of a nonlinear diffusion equation with schematic initial conditions, and for gluons with boundary…
We review the most important experimental results from the first three years of nucleus-nucleus collision studies at RHIC, with emphasis on results from the STAR experiment, and we assess their interpretation and comparison to theory. The…
Coupling of the quark-gluon plasma from the early stage of heavy-ion collisions is argued to be weaker at LHC than at RHIC. For this reason, the role of instabilities - the pre-equilibrium plasma is unstable with respect to chromomagnetic…
Heavy quarks (i.e. charm and beauty) in heavy-ion collisions are initially produced out of kinetic equilibrium via hard partonic scattering processes. However, recent measurements of anisotropic flow of charmed hadrons pose the question…
QCD critical point is a landmark region in the QCD phase diagram outlined by temperature as a function of baryon chemical potential. To the right of this second-order phase transition point, one expects first order quark-hadron phase…
The tiny droplets of Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP) created in high-energy nuclear collisions experience fast expansion and cooling with a lifetime of a few $\text{fm}/c$. Despite the information provided by probes such as jet quenching and…
As a result of multiple mini-jet production, initial conditions of the QCD plasma formed in ultrarelativistic nuclear collisions may be inhomogeneous, with large fluctuations of the local energy density (hot spots), and turbulent, with a…
We study the role of QCD plasma instabilities in non-equilibrium quark-gluon plasmas. First, we argue that such instabilities must drastically modify the "bottom-up" thermalization scenario for heavy-ion collisions. Second, we discuss…
We survey contemporary studies of hadrons and strongly interacting quarks using QCD's Dyson-Schwinger equations, addressing: aspects of confinement and dynamical chiral symmetry breaking; the hadron spectrum; hadron elastic and transition…
We analyze the possibilities for studying properties of dense QCD-matter, created in ultrarelativistic nuclear collisions, by hard QCD-production processes, so-called "hard" probes -- heavy quarkonia, hard jets, high mass dimuons. Special…
The physics of the initial conditions of heavy ion collisions is dominated by the nonlinear gluonic interactions of QCD. These lead to the concepts of parton saturation and the Color Glass Condensate (CGC). We discuss recent progress in…
After reviewing some basic concepts of the theory of strongly interacting matter above nuclear energy density and reviewing some salient results of the experimental program at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), these lectures…
We present a review of the studies related to establishing the QCD phase diagram through high energy nucleus-nucleus collisions. We particularly focus on the experimental results related to the formation of a quark-gluon phase, crossover…
The quark-gluon plasma produced by collisions between ultra-relativistic heavy nuclei is well described in the language of hydrodynamics. Non-central collisions are characterized by very large angular momentum, which in a fluid system…
The high energy limit of QCD is controlled by very high energy density gluonic matter, the Color Glass Condensate. In the first instants of the collisions of two sheets of Colored Glass Condensate, a Glasma is formed with longitudinal flux…
We study the kinetic equilibration of gluons produced in the very early stages of a high energy heavy ion collision in a ``self-consistent'' relaxation time approximation. We compare two scenarios describing the initial state of the gluon…