Related papers: Classical fields and heavy ion collisions
We give a pedagogical introduction (suitable to upper level physics undergraduates) to the field of ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions. We pay particular attention to our understanding of the thermodynamic and hydrodynamic properties of…
Over the last decade a fruitful interplay has developed between analyses of strongly coupled non-abelian plasmas via the gauge/string duality and the phenomenology of the quark-gluon plasma created in heavy ion collisions. I review the…
We show that a special choice of light-cone gauge can greatly simplify the calculation of the classical color field created in the initial stages of nucleus-nucleus collisions. Within this gauge, we can in particular construct explicitly…
A sizable contribution to heavy quark production in high-energy hadronic and nuclear collisions comes from heavy quark-antiquark pair production from gluon splitting during the parton shower evolution. We investigate the effect of…
The physics of heavy-ion collisions is one of the most exciting and challenging directions of science for the last four decades. On the theoretical side one deals with a non-abelian field theory, while on the experimental side today's…
We argue that multi-particle production in high energy hadron and nuclear collisions can be considered as proceeding through the production of gluons in the background classical field. In this approach we derive the gluon spectrum…
We describe the dynamics of gluons and quarks in a relativistic nuclear collision, within the framework of classical mean-field transport theory, by the coupled equations for the classical Yang-Mills field and a collection of colored point…
Heavy ion collisions pose interesting challenges to quantum chromodynamics, because they probe the parton structure of the incoming nuclei at very small longitudinal momentum fractions. Combined with the large size of nuclei, this may lead…
We discuss a number of prominent theoretical challenges in the physics of ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions, and review some recent attempts to tackle them. These examples cover most stages of the collision process, but emphasis is…
At high energies a quark-gluon plasma is expected to be formed in heavy ion collisions at RHIC and LHC. The theoretical description of these processes is directly associated to a complete knowledge of the details of medium effects in the…
The study of heavy-ion collisions presents a challenge to both theoretical and experimental nuclear physics. Due to the extremely short lifetime and small size of the collision system, disentangling information provided by experimental…
I review recent developments in the field of relativistic hydrodynamics and its application to the bulk dynamics in heavy-ion collisions at the Relativistic Heavy- Ion Collider (RHIC) and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In particular, I…
This paper intends to review some of the prominent properties of strongly coupled classical plasmas having in mind the possible link with the quark-gluon plasma created in heavy-ion collisions. Thermodynamic and transport properties of…
The extremely large electromagnetic fields generated in heavy-ion collisions provide access to novel observables that are expected to constrain various key transport properties of the quark-gluon plasma and could help solve one of the…
In the last few years, numerical simulations of QCD on the lattice have reached a new level of accuracy. A wide range of thermodynamic quantities is now available in the continuum limit and for physical quark masses. This allows a…
We investigate the processes leading to phase-space equilibration of parton distributions in nuclear interactions at collider energies. We derive a set of rate equations describing the chemical equilibration of gluons and quarks including…
We discuss a new approach to ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions based on classical hadrodynamics for extended nucleons, corresponding to nucleons of finite size interacting with massive meson fields. This new theory provides a natural…
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 intention of this study is the search for signatures of the chiral phase transition in heavy-ion collisions. To investigate the impact of fluctuations, e.g., of the baryon number, at the transition or at a critical point, the linear…
Atomic number ($A$) and energy ($\roots$) scaling exponents of multiplicity and transverse energy in heavy ion collisions are analytically derived in the perturbative QCD + saturation model. The exponents depend on the small-$x$ behaviour…