On the importance of low-energy beta beams for supernova neutrino physics

We argue that isotropization and, consequently, thermalization of the system of gluons and quarks produced in an ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collision does not follow from Feynman diagram analysis to any order in the coupling constant. We conclude that the apparent thermalization of quarks and gluons, leading to success of perfect fluid hydrodynamics in describing heavy-ion collisions at RHIC, can only be attributed to the non-perturbative QCD effects not captured by Feynman diagrams. We proceed by modeling these non-pertrubative thermalization effects using viscous hydrodynamics. We point out that matching Color Glass Condensate inital conditions with viscous hydrodynamics leads to a continuous evolution of all the components of the energy-momentum tensor and, unlike the case of ideal hydrodynamics, does not give rise to a discontinuity in the longitudinal pressure. An important consequence of such a matching is a relationship between the thermalization time and shear viscosity: we observe that small viscosity leads to short thermalization time.     

The beauty of the electromagnetic probe

Selected results from the first five years of RHIC data taking are reviewed with emphasis on the evidence for thermalization in central Au + Au collisions at = 200GeV.     

A possible modified “bottom-up” thermalization in heavy ion collisions

We present a possible scaling solution to preequilibrium evolution which interpolates between the instability present in the dense gluon system produced immediately after a heavy ion collision and the final equilibration which occurs later. Our solution depends on a single parameter δ. Depending on the value of δ, our proposed solution matches onto the bottom-up picture either at an intermediate stage or toward the end of the evolution given by bottom-up. We discuss in detail the reasons why we believe our solution is self-consistent, and we also point out why it is difficult to actually prove consistency.     

Thermal relaxation for the Relativistic Ornstein–Uhlenbeck Process

The thermal relaxation of a relativistic particle diffusing in a fluid at equilibrium is investigated through a numerical study of the Relativistic Ornstein–Uhlenbeck Process. The spectrum of the relaxation operator has both a discrete and a continuous component. Both components are fully characterized and the limit between them is given a simple interpretation. Short-time relaxation is addressed separately, and a global effective relaxation time is also computed. The general conclusion is that relativistic effects slow down thermalization.     

Expanding color flux tubes and instabilities

We present an analytic study of the physics of the glasma which is a strong classical gluon field created at early stage of high-energy heavy-ion collisions. Our analysis is based on the picture that the glasma just after the collision is made of color electric and magnetic flux tubes extending in the longitudinal direction with their diameters of the order of 1/Q_s (Q_s is the saturation scale of the colliding nuclei). We find that both the electric and magnetic flux tubes expand outwards and the field strength inside the flux tube decays rapidly in time. Next we investigate whether there exist instabilities against small rapidity-dependent perturbations for a fixed color configuration. We find that the magnetic background field exhibits an instability induced by the fluctuations in the lowest Landau level, and it grows exponentially in the time scale of 1/Q_s. For the electric background field we find no apparent instability while the possible relation to the Schwinger mechanism for particle pair creations is suggested.     

Two-particle correlations from the q-Boson viewpoint

We propose and develop to some extent a novel approach, which allows to effectively describe, for relativistic heavy-ion collisions, the empirically observed deviation from unity of the intercept λ (i.e. the measured value corresponding to zero relative momentum p of two registered identical pions or kaons) of the two-particle correlation function C(p,K). The approach is based on the use of two versions of the so-called q-deformed oscillators and the corresponding picture of ideal gases of q-bosons. By these techniques the intercept λ is put into direct correspondence with the deformation parameter q. For fixed deformation strength, the model predicts particular dependence of the intercept λ on the pion pair mean momentum K. Received: 2 July 1999 / Revised version: 11 November 1999     

Thermalization of gluons at RHIC: Dependence on initial conditions

We investigate how thermalization of gluons depends on the initial conditions assumed in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions at RHIC. The study is based on simulations employing the pQCD inspired parton cascade solving the Boltzmann equation for gluons. We consider independently produced minijets with p _T > p ₀ = 1.3-2.0GeV and a color glass condensate as possible initial conditions for the freed gluons. It turns out that full kinetic equilibrium is achieved slightly sooner in denser systems and its timescale tends to saturate. Compared with the kinetic equilibration we find a stronger dependence of chemical equilibration on the initial conditions.     

Characteristic electron thermalization time in dielectric media

An approximate solution is obtained for the thermalization transport equation for electrons with an energy below the atom ionization potential. The results are used to estimate the thermalization time and the time of removal of the ionization electron from its atom in the gaseous and liquid states of inert gases. Zh. Tekh. Fiz. 67, 41–45 (June 1997)     

Flow-shear instability of a potential hump in hot plasma

Low-frequency instability arising in hot magnetized plasma with a hump-shaped transverse profile of the potential has been observed experimentally. As a result of the instability, the plasma in the region of the maximum of the potential decomposes into an array of dense plasmoids and deep rarefactions. The instability is due to nonuniform E×B drift and is apparently a Rayleigh instability which reaches a strongly nonlinear stage. In the process, strong transverse transport arises, resulting in plasma losses. Pis’ma Zh. éksp. Teor. Fiz. 64, No. 3, 134–139 (10 August 1996)     

Comparative first-principles analysis of the absorption spectra of ZnAl2S4 and ZnGa2O4 crystals doped with Cr3+

Systematic first-principles analysis of the energy level schemes and ground state absorption spectra of trivalent chromium in ZnAl₂S₄ and ZnGa₂O₄ crystals has been performed in the present paper. The recently developed first-principles approach to the analysis of the absorption spectra of impurity ions in crystals based on the discrete variational multi-electron (DV-ME) method [K. Ogasawara et al., Phys. Rev. B 64, 115413 (2001)] was used in the calculations. The method is based on the numerical solution of the Dirac equation; no phenomenological parameters are used in the calculations. As a result, complete energy level schemes of the Cr³⁺ ion and its absorption spectra in both crystals were calculated, assigned and compared with experimental data. By performing analysis of the molecular orbital (MO) population, it was shown that the covalency of the chemical bonds between the Cr³⁺ and S^2- ions is more significant than that one between the Cr³⁺ and O^2- ions.     

Influence of electronic excitations on the thermodynamics of small carbon clusters: the example of C3 +

We illustrate the influence of the thermalization of electrons on the linear-cyclic isomerization of small carbon clusters by model Monte Carlo calculations of C₃ ⁺ at 3500 K. It is shown that the inclusion of the electronic degrees of freedom, in such systems with several low-lying excited states, can significantly change the relative isomer populations and energy distributions, as compared with equivalent electronic ground-state simulations.     

An efficient solver for large structured eigenvalue problems in relativistic quantum chemistry

ABSTRACT

We report an efficient program for computing the eigenvalues and symmetry-adapted eigenvectors of very large quaternionic (or Hermitian skew-Hamiltonian) matrices, using which structure-preserving diagonalisation of matrices of dimension N > 10, 000 is now routine on a single computer node. Such matrices appear frequently in relativistic quantum chemistry owing to the time-reversal symmetry. The implementation is based on a blocked version of the Paige–Van Loan algorithm, which allows us to use the Level 3 BLAS subroutines for most of the computations. Taking advantage of the symmetry, the program is faster by up to a factor of 2 than state-of-the-art implementations of complex Hermitian diagonalisation; diagonalising a 12, 800 × 12, 800 matrix took 42.8 (9.5) and 85.6 (12.6) minutes with 1 CPU core (16 CPU cores) using our symmetry-adapted solver and Intel Math Kernel Library's ZHEEV that is not structure-preserving, respectively. The source code is publicly available under the FreeBSD licence.     

Transverse radial expansion in nuclear collisions and two particle correlations

At the very first stage of an ultra-relativistic nucleus–nucleus collision new particles are produced in individual nucleon–nucleon collisions. In the transverse plane, all particles from a single NN collision are initially located at the same position. The subsequent thermalization and transverse radial expansion of the system create strong position-momentum correlations and lead to characteristic rapidity, transverse momentum, and azimuthal correlations among the produced particles.     

Possible phases of the two-dimensional Hubbard model

We present a stability analysis of the 2D t - t' Hubbard model on a square lattice for various values of the next-nearest-neighbor hopping t' and electron concentration. Using the free energy expression, derived by means of the flow equations method, we have performed numerical calculation for the various representations under the point group C _4ν in order to determine at which temperature symmetry broken phases become more favorable than the symmetric phase. A surprisingly large number of phases has been observed. Some of them have an order parameter with many nodes in -space. Commonly discussed types of order found by us are antiferromagnetism, d _{x2 - y2} -wave singlet superconductivity, d-wave Pomeranchuk instability and flux phase. A few instabilities newly observed are a triplet analog of the flux phase, a particle-hole instability of p-type symmetry in the triplet channel which gives rise to a phase of magnetic currents, an s^*-magnetic phase, a g-wave Pomeranchuk instability and the band splitting phase with p-wave character. Other weaker instabilities are found also. A comparison with experiments is made. Received 25 July 2002 / Received in final form 28 November 2002 Published online 14 February 2003 RID="a" ID="a"Current address: Département de physique and Centre de recherche sur les propriétés électroniques de matériaux avancés, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada J1K 2R1 e-mail: vaha@physique.usherb.ca     

Advances in relativistic molecular quantum mechanics

A quantum mechanical equation HΨ=EΨ$H\Psi =E\Psi$ is composed of three components, viz., Hamiltonian H$H$, wave function Ψ$\Psi$, and property E(λ)$E\left(\lambda \right)$, each of which is confronted with fundamental issues in the relativistic regime, e.g., (1) What is the most appropriate relativistic many-body Hamiltonian? How to solve the resulting equation? (2) How does the relativistic wave function behave at the coalescence of two electrons? How to do relativistic explicit correlation? (3) How to formulate relativistic properties properly?, to name just a few. It is shown here that the charge-conjugated contraction of Fermion operators, dictated by the charge conjugation symmetry, allows for a bottom-up construction of a relativistic Hamiltonian that is in line with the principles of quantum electrodynamics (QED). Various approximate but accurate forms of the Hamiltonian can be obtained based entirely on physical arguments. In particular, the exact two-component Hamiltonians can be formulated in a general way to cast electric and magnetic fields, as well as electron self-energy and vacuum polarization, into a unified framework. While such algebraic two-component Hamiltonians are incompatible with explicit correlation, four-component relativistic explicitly correlated approaches can indeed be made fully parallel to the nonrelativistic counterparts by virtue of the ‘extended no-pair projection’ and the coalescence conditions. These findings open up new avenues for future developments of relativistic molecular quantum mechanics. In particular, ‘molecular QED’ will soon become an active and exciting field.     

Elliptic flow at SPS and RHIC: from kinetic transport to hydrodynamics

Anisotropic transverse flow is studied in Pb+Pb and Au+Au collisions at SPS and RHIC energies. The centrality and transverse momentum dependence at midrapidity of the elliptic flow coefficient v₂ is calculated in the hydrodynamic and low density limits. Hydrodynamics is found to agree well with the RHIC data for semicentral collisions up to transverse momenta of 1–1.5 GeV/c, but it considerably overestimates the measured elliptic flow at SPS energies. The low density limit LDL is inconsistent with the measured magnitude of v₂ at RHIC energies and with the shape of its p_t-dependence at both RHIC and SPS energies. The success of the hydrodynamic model points to very rapid thermalization in Au+Au collisions at RHIC and provides a serious challenge for kinetic approaches based on classical scattering of on-shell particles.     

Formation of charmonium states in heavy-ion collisions and thermalization of charm

We examine the possibility to utilize in-medium charmonium formation in heavy-ion interactions at collider energy as a probe of the properties of the medium. This is possible because the formation process involves recombination of charm quarks which imprints a signal on the resulting normalized transverse momentum distribution containing information about the momentum distribution of the quarks. We have contrasted the transverse momentum spectra of J/ψ, characterized by 〈p _T ²〉, which result from the formation process in which the charm quark distributions are taken at opposite limits with regard to thermalization in the medium. The first uses charm quark distributions unchanged from their initial production in a pQCD process, appropriate if their interaction with the medium is negligible. The second uses charm quark distributions which are in complete thermal equilibrium with the transversely expanding medium, appropriate if a very strong interaction between charm quarks and medium exists. We find that the resulting 〈p _T ²〉 of the formed J/ψ should allow one to differentiate between these extremes, and that this differentiation is not sensitive to variations in the detailed dynamics of in-medium formation. We include a comparison of predictions of this model with preliminary PHENIX measurements, which indicates compatibility with a substantial fraction of in-medium formation.