Initial conditions of bulk matter in ultrarelativistic nuclear collisions
arXiv:1904.08290
Abstract
Dynamical models based on relativistic fluid dynamics provide a powerful tool to extract the properties of the strongly-coupled quark-gluon plasma (QGP) produced by ultrarelativistic nuclear collisions. The largest source of uncertainty in these model-to-data extractions is the choice of theoretical initial conditions (ICs) used to model the distribution of energy or entropy at the hydrodynamic starting time. Descriptions of the ICs are generally improved through iterative cycles of testing and refinement. Individual models are compared to experimental data; the worst models are discarded and best models retained. Consequently, successful traits (assumptions) are passed on to subsequent generations of the theoretical landscape. This bottom-up approach correspondingly describes a form of theoretical trial and error, where each trial proposes an ab initio solution to the problem at hand. A natural complement to this strategy, is to employ a top-down or data-driven approach which is able to reverse engineer properties of the ICs from the constraints imposed by the experimental data. In this dissertation, I motivate and develop a parametric IC model based on a family of functions known as the generalized means. The ansatz closely mimics the variability of ab initio calculations and serves as a reasonable parametric form for exploring QGP energy and entropy deposition assuming imperfect knowledge of the complex physical processes which lead to its creation. With the parametric model in hand, I explore broad implications of the proposed ansatz using recently adapted Bayesian methods to simultaneously constrain properties of the ICs and QGP medium using experimental data from the Large Hadron Collider. These analyses show that the ICs are highly constrained by available measurements and provide evidence of a unified hydrodynamic description of small and large nuclear collision systems.
Ph.D. dissertation; 250 pages, 91 figures
References in corpus (43)
- Viscosity in Strongly Interacting Quantum Field Theories from Black Hole Physics
- Glauber Modeling in High Energy Nuclear Collisions
- Systematic Measurements of Identified Particle Spectra in pp, d+Au and Au+Au Collisions from STAR
- Elliptic and triangular flow in event-by-event (3+1)D viscous hydrodynamics
- Observation of long-range near-side angular correlations in proton-lead collisions at the LHC
- 200 A GeV Au+Au collisions serve a nearly perfect quark-gluon liquid
- Alternative ansatz to wounded nucleon and binary collision scaling in high-energy nuclear collisions
- On the Strongly-Interacting Low-Viscosity Matter Created in Relativistic Nuclear Collisions
- Fully integrated transport approach to heavy ion reactions with an intermediate hydrodynamic stage
- Scaling properties of azimuthal anisotropy in Au+Au and Cu+Cu collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV
- Space-time evolution of bulk QCD matter
- Multiplicity scaling in ideal and viscous hydrodynamics
- K*(892) and (1020) production in Pb-Pb collisions at = 2.76 TeV
- Multi-particle azimuthal correlations in p-Pb and Pb-Pb collisions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider
- Effects of fluctuations on the initial eccentricity from the Color Glass Condensate in heavy ion collisions
- Event-by-event hydrodynamics and elliptic flow from fluctuating initial state
- Transport Coefficients of Bulk Viscous Pressure in the 14-moment approximation
- Effect of flow fluctuations and nonflow on elliptic flow methods
- Therminator: Thermal heavy-Ion generator
- Imprints of fluctuating proton shapes on flow in proton-lead collisions at the LHC
- The eccentricity in heavy-ion collisions from Color Glass Condensate initial conditions
- Second order hydrodynamic coefficients from kinetic theory
- Eccentricity fluctuations from the Color Glass Condensate at RHIC and LHC
- Testing the Chiral Magnetic Effect with Central U+U collisions
- Directed flow in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions
- Revealing proton shape fluctuations with incoherent diffraction at high energy
- The PHOBOS Glauber Monte Carlo
- Hadron spectra and elliptic flow for 200 A GeV Au+Au collisions from viscous hydrodynamics coupled to a Boltzmann cascade
- Collectivity and electromagnetic radiation in small systems
- Eccentricity fluctuation effects on elliptic flow in relativistic heavy ion collisions
- Event-by-event mean fluctuations in pp and Pb-Pb collisions at the LHC
- High transverse momentum eta meson production in p+p, d+Au and Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV
- Nuclear Effects on Hadron Production in d+Au and p+p Collisions at sqrt(s_NN)=200 GeV
- Quantifying properties of hot and dense QCD matter through systematic model-to-data comparison
- Viscous Effects on the Mapping of the Initial to Final State in Heavy Ion Collisions
- The shape of the proton at high energies
- Coupling Relativistic Viscous Hydrodynamics to Boltzmann Descriptions
- Free-streaming approximation in early dynamics of relativistic heavy-ion collisions
- Multi-particle and charge-dependent azimuthal correlations in heavy-ion collisions at the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider
- Longitudinal fluctuations of the fireball density in heavy-ion collisions
- Predictions of elliptic flow and nuclear modification factor from 200 GeV U + U collisions at RHIC
- Multiplicities and spectra in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions from a next-to-leading order improved perturbative QCD + saturation + hydrodynamics model
- Ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions: the first billion seconds