New paradigm for fluctuations in heavy-ion collisions

Abstract

Since their discovery, fluctuations in the initial state of heavy-ion collisions have been understood as originating mostly from the random positions of nucleons within the colliding nuclei. We consider an alternative approach where all the focus is on fluctuations generated by QCD interactions, that we evaluate at leading logarithmic accuracy in the color glass condensate effective theory. We validate our approach using BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) data on anisotropic flow. In particular, we show that, compared to standard Glauber-inspired calculations, our formalism provides a better description of the centrality dependence of the ratio of elliptic flow and triangular flow. It also naturally explains the evolution of elliptic flow fluctuations between RHIC and LHC energies.

v1: 7 pages, 2 figures. v2: 10 pages, 6 figures; Extensive revision of the paper. We now use ATLAS data. More observables investigated in Figs 3 and 4. Detailed justification of formulas in Appendix A. Validity of formalism assessed in Appendix B

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Cited by in corpus (18)

• Imaging Shapes of Atomic Nuclei in High-Energy Nuclear Collisions
• The smallest fluid on earth
• Review of proton and nuclear shape fluctuations at high energy
• 3-D structure of the Glasma initial state -- Breaking boost-invariance by collisions of extended shock waves in classical Yang-Mills theory
• Hot spots and gluon field fluctuations as causes of eccentricity in small systems
• Statistical analysis of initial state and final state response in heavy-ion collisions
• Accessing the speed of sound in relativistic ultracentral nucleus-nucleus collisions using the mean transverse momentum
• Evolution of initial stage fluctuations in the glasma
• Gluonic Hot Spot Initial Conditions in Heavy-Ion Collisions
• On model emulation and closure tests for 3+1D relativistic heavy-ion collisions
• Nuclear $p_{\perp }$-broadening of Drell-Yan and quarkonium production from SPS to LHC
• Model comparison for initial density fluctuations in high energy heavy ion collisions
• Evolution of eccentricities induced by geometrical and quantum fluctuations in proton-nucleus collisions
• Evolution of fluctuations in the initial state of heavy-ion collisions from RHIC to LHC
• Perturbative structure of two- and four-point functions of color charge in a non-Gaussian small-$x$ action
• Statistical analysis of the fluctuations of an initial-state model with independently distributed hot spots
• Mode-by-mode evolution of Pb-Pb collisions at 5.02 TeV in a hybrid model
• Searching for initial state fluctuations in heavy ion collisions at FAIR energy using Principal Component Analysis