Statistical description with anisotropic momentum distributions for hadron production in nucleus-nucleus collisions

The various experimental data at AGS, SPS and RHIC energies on hadron particle yields for central heavy ion collisions are investigated by employing a generalized statistical density operator, that allows for a well-defined anisotropic local momentum distribution for each particle species, specified by a common streaming velocity parameter. The individual particle ratios are rather insensitive to a change in this new intensive parameter. This leads to the conclusion that the reproduction of particle ratios by a statistical treatment does not imply the existence of a fully isotropic local momentum distribution at hadrochemical freeze-out, i.e. a state of almost complete thermal equilibrium.Comment: 14 pages, revtex, 3 figures accepted version, to be published in Journal of Physics

Hard dihadron correlations in heavy-ion collisions at RHIC and LHC

High transverse momentum (P_T) processes are considered to be an important tool to probe and understand the medium produced in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions via the interaction of hard, perturbatively produced partons with the medium. In this context, triggered hard dihadron correlations constitute a class of observables set between hard single inclusive hadrons (dominated by the leading jet fragments) and fully reconstructed jets - while they probe some features of the perturbative QCD evolution of a parton shower in the medium, they do not suffer from the problem of finding a suitable separation between soft perturbative (jet-like) and soft non-perturbative (medium-like) physics as the identification of full jets does. On the other hand, the trigger requirement introduces non-trivial complications to the process, which makes the medium-modification of the correlation pattern difficult and non-intuitive to understand. In this work, we review the basic physics underlying triggered dihadron correlations and make a systematic comparison of several combinations of medium evolution and parton-medium interaction models with the available data from 200 AGeV Au-Au collisions at RHIC. We also discuss the expected results for 2.76 ATeV Pb-Pb collisions at the LHC.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures, submitted to PR

Dijet asymmetry at the Large Hadron Collider

The MARTINI numerical simulation allows for direct comparison of theoretical model calculations and the latest results for dijet asymmetry from the ATLAS and CMS collaborations. In this paper, partons are simulated as undergoing radiative and collisional processes throughout the evolution of central lead-lead collisions at the Large Hadron Collider. Using hydrodynamical background evolution determined by a simulation which fits well with the data on charged particle multiplicities from ALICE and a value of $\alpha_s\approx 0.25-0.3$, the dijet asymmetry is found to be consistent with partonic energy loss in a hot, strongly-interacting medium.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures. For version 2: ATLAS' latest analysis is included, with some comments and minor changes of wordin

QGP collective effects and jet transport

We present numerical simulations of the SU(2) Boltzmann-Vlasov equation including both hard elastic particle collisions and soft interactions mediated by classical Yang-Mills fields. We provide an estimate of the coupling of jets to a hot isotropic plasma, which is independent of infrared cutoffs. In addition, we investigate jet propagation in anisotropic plasmas, as created in heavy-ion collisions. The broadening of jets is found to be stronger along the beam line than in azimuth due to the creation of field configurations with B_t>E_t and E_z>B_z via plasma instabilities.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures. Presented at the 20th International Conference on Ultra-Relativistic Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions: Quark Matter 2008 (QM2008), Jaipur, India, 4-10 Feb 200

Thermally Fluctuating Second-Order Viscous Hydrodynamics and Heavy-Ion Collisions

The fluctuation-dissipation theorem requires the presence of thermal noise in viscous fluids. The time and length scales of heavy ion collisions are small enough so that the thermal noise can have a measurable effect on observables. Thermal noise is included in numerical simulations of high energy lead-lead collisions, increasing average values of the momentum eccentricity and contributing to its event by event fluctuations.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figure