Evolution of Hot, Dissipative Quark Matter in Relativistic Nuclear Collisions

Abstract

Non-ideal fluid dynamics with cylindrical symmetry in transverse direction and longitudinal scaling flow is employed to simulate the space-time evolution of the quark-gluon plasma produced in heavy-ion collisions at RHIC energies. The dynamical expansion is studied as a function of initial energy density and initial time. A causal theory of dissipative fluid dynamics is used instead of the standard theories which are acausal. We compute the parton momentum spectra and HBT radii from two-particle correlation functions. We find that, in non-ideal fluid dynamics, the reduction of the longitudinal pressure due to viscous effects leads to an increase of transverse flow and a decrease of the ratio $R_{out}/R_{side}$ as compared to the ideal fluid approximation.

25 pages, 5 figures, corrected typos and and minor changes