Explosive Decomposition in Ultrarelativistic Heavy Ion Collision

Abstract

Recent results from Au+Au collisions at BNL-RHIC energy hint at explosive hadron production at the QCD transition rather than soft hydrodynamic evolution. We speculate that this is due to a rapid variation of the effective potential for QCD close to Tc. Performing real-time lattice simulations of an effective theory we show that the fast evolution of the potential leads to ``explosive'' spinodal decomposition rather than bubble nucleation or critical slowing down.

5 pages latex and 10 figures, Version accepted for PRL (but page 5 containing additional 6 figures will not appear in PRL)

Cited by in corpus (60)

• Phase diagram of hot QCD in an external magnetic field: possible splitting of deconfinement and chiral transitions
• Chiral transition in a strong magnetic background
• Deconfining Phase Transition as a Matrix Model of Renormalized Polyakov Loops
• Dense Quarks, and the Fermion Sign Problem, in a SU(N) Matrix Model
• Two-point functions for SU(3) Polyakov Loops near T_c
• Chiral transition in a finite system and possible use of finite size scaling in relativistic heavy ion collisions
• Bulk Viscosity driven clusterization of quark-gluon plasma and early freeze-out in relativistic heavy-ion collisions
• Hydrodynamics Near a Chiral Critical Point
• How Wide is the Transition to Deconfinement?
• The K/pi ratio from condensed Polyakov loops
• Spinodal decomposition during the hadronization stage at RHIC?
• Deconfinement in Matrix Models about the Gross--Witten Point
• Small shear viscosity in the semi quark gluon plasma
• Casimir scaling and renormalization of Polyakov loops in large-N gauge theories
• Polyakov Loops versus Hadronic States
• Hydrodynamical description of first-order phase transitions: Analytical treatment and numerical modeling
• Higher Representations: Confinement and Large N
• Space-time evolution and HBT analysis of relativistic heavy ion collisions in a chiral SU(3) x SU(3) model
• Phase conversion in a weakly first-order quark-hadron transition
• CP violation and chiral symmetry restoration in the hot linear sigma model in a strong magnetic background
• Kaon Interferometry: A Sensitive Probe of the QCD Equation of State?
• Density inhomogeneities in heavy ion collisions around the critical point
• Thermal chiral and deconfining transitions in the presence of a magnetic background
• Can dissipation prevent explosive decomposition in high-energy heavy ion collisions?
• The Quark-Mass Dependence of T_C in QCD: Working up from m=0 or down from m=infinity ?
• Critical Behavior of Non Order-Parameter Fields
• Induced Universal Properties and Deconfinement
• Glueball Dark Matter revisited
• Hydrodynamical instabilities in an expanding quark gluon plasma
• Inhomogeneous freeze-out in relativistic heavy-ion collisions
• Dynamics of Phase Transitions by Hysteresis Methods I
• Glauber dynamics of phase transitions: SU(3) lattice gauge theory
• One-Loop QCD Corrections to the Thermal Wilson Line Model
• Finite-Size Effects on Nucleation in a First-Order Phase Transition
• Beta-functions for a SU(2) Matrix Model in 2 + epsilon Dimensions
• Partial Deconfinement in Color Superconductivity
• Structure formation during phase transitions in strongly interacting matter
• Langevin dynamics of the pure SU(2) deconfining transition
• Thermalization in SU(3) gauge theory after a deconfining quench
• A method for analysing the jet azimuthal anisotropy in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions
• Dissipation at Two-Loop Level: Undressing the Chiral Condensate
• Glueball dark matter, precisely
• Dynamics of Phase Transitions: The 3D 3-state Potts model
• Effects from inhomogeneities in the chiral transition
• (Strange) Meson Interferometry at RHIC
• Inhibition of splitting of the chiral and deconfinement transition due to rotation in QCD: the phase diagram of linear sigma model coupled to Polyakov loop
• Evolution of the Structure Factors in Pure SU(N) Lattice Gauge Theory and Effective Spin Models
• Deconfinement transition dynamics and early thermalization in QGP
• Model A Dynamics and the Deconfining Phase Transition for Pure Lattice Gauge Theory
• Field dynamics and kink-antikink production in rapidly expanding systems
• Chiral MHD description of a perfect magnetized QGP using the effective NJL model in a strong magnetic field
• Q-ball formation at the deconfinement temperature in large-$N_c$ QCD
• Time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau approach to the dynamics of inhomogeneous chiral condensates in a nonlocal Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model
• On the nucleation of hadronic domains in the quark-hadron transition
• Gravitating bubbles of gluon plasma above deconfinement temperature
• Effective Lagrangians for QCD: Deconfinement and Chiral Symmetry Restoration
• Inhomogeneous freeze-out in heavy-ion collisions
• The topological approach to baryon-antibaryon and meson production in rapidly expanding Bjorken rods
• $Z_N$-balls: Solitons from $Z_N$-symmetric scalar field theory
• The deconfined phase near Tc and its decay into hadrons