Year: 2020
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: In this proceedings contribution I review recent work in kinetic theory which demonstrates that, for system undergoing Bjorken expansion, there exists an attractor in all moments of the one-particle distribution function. I discuss how this attractor emerges in both exact solutions obtained in relaxation time approximation (RTA) and the effective kinetic theory approach to high-temperature quantum chromodynamics (QCD). The QCD effective kinetic theory collisional kernel used includes both elastic (2 ↔ 2) and LPM-resummed inelastic (2 ↔ 1) contributions. The results obtained indicate that a pseudothermal attractor exists in both RTA and QCD kinetic theory and that their respective attractors can be extended to early times when the system is far from equilibrium. Finally, I discuss how knowledge of the QCD effective kinetic theory attractor can be used to assess different hydrodynamic freeze-out prescriptions used in heavy-ion phenomenology. The results obtained show that improved freeze-out prescriptions such as anisotropic hydrodynamics perform better in conditions corresponding to those generated in high-multiplicity pA and pp collisions, e.g. short lifetime and high inverse Reynolds number.
Author: Michael Strickland
Institution: Kent State University
Language: English
Subfield: Nuclear and High Energy Physics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
Award: G8025081922
OpenAlex ID: W3034459359