On chemical equilibrium in nuclear collisions

The data on average hadron multiplicities in central A+A collisions measured at CERN SPS are analysed with the ideal hadron gas model. It is shown that the full chemical equilibrium version of the model fails to describe the experimental results. The agreement of the data with the off–equilibrium version allowing for partial strangeness saturation is significantly better. The chemical freeze–out temperature of about 180 MeV seems to be independent of the system size (from S+S to Pb+Pb) and in agreement with that extracted in , and collisions. The strangeness suppression is discussed at both hadron and valence quark level. It is found that the hadronic strangeness saturation factor increases from about 0.45 for interactions to about 0.7 for central A+A collisions with no significant change from S+S to Pb+Pb collisions indicating that the strangeness enhancement in heavy ion collisions cannot be fully attributed to the increased system size. The quark strangeness suppression factor is found to be about 0.2 for elementary collisions and about 0.4 for heavy ion collisions independently of collision energy and type of colliding system. Received: 31 October 1997 / Published online: 26 February 1998     

Photon interferometry of Au+Au collisions at the BNL Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider

We calculate the two-body correlation function of direct photons produced in central Au+Au collisions at the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider. Our calculation includes contributions from the early preequilibrium phase in which photons are produced via hard parton scatterings as well as radiation of photons from a thermalized quark-gluon plasma and the subsequent expanding hadron gas. We find that high energy photon interferometry provides a faithful probe of the details of the space-time evolution and of the early reaction stages of the system.     

Hadronic energy density in the dual parton model with formation zone intranuclear cascade

We study the evolution of the hadronic energy and particle density during central nucleus-nucleus collisions at various energies with a Monte Carlo version of the dual parton model. We find at RHIC and at LHC energies energy densities well in the range where the formation of quark gluon plasma is expected.     

Physics of collisions between ultrarelativistic nuclei: Manifestation of collective effects

Experimental results concerning heavy-ion collisions studied by means of the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) at an energy of 100 GeV per nucleon and showing manifestations of collective effects are surveyed. These effects are interpreted as a consequence of the formation of a dense thermalized medium referred to as quark-gluon plasma (strongly interacting quark-gluon plasma, quark-gluon matter, parton medium). An azimuthal anisotropy of particles, the suppression of the particle yield at high transverse momenta in relation to proton-proton collisions, and a change in the shape of the peak from a hadron jet in nucleus-nucleus collisions are spectacular manifestations of collective effects.     

高能强子–强子碰撞中喷注的产生与演化过程的动力学起伏

用蒙特卡洛方法对630GeV/c质子–反质子碰撞中的无偏样本、喷注事件样本和喷注内样本中的动力学起伏进行了研究.结果表明,喷注事件样本和电子–正电子对撞的全事件样本相似,近似地有各向同性的动力学起伏,而喷注内样本则和电子–正电子对撞的喷注一样,有类似于强子–强子碰撞软过程的各向异性动力学起伏.这表明,强子–强子碰撞中喷注的产生和演化分别和电子–正电子碰撞中喷注的产生和演化有类似的动力学性质.     

Associated production of one particle and a Drell-Yan pair in hadronic collisions

We propose a collinear factorization formula for the associated production of one particle and a Drell-Yan pair in hadronic collisions. It is shown that additional collinear singularities appearing in the next-to-leading order calculations that cannot be factorized into parton and fragmentation functions are systematically renormalized by introducing fracture functions. Next-to-leading order coefficient functions for cross-sections double differential in the fractional energy of the identified hadron and lepton pair invariant mass are presented.     

Physics perspectives of the ALICE experiment at the large hadron collider

The large hadron collider (LHC) under construction at CERN will deliver ion beams up to centre of mass energies of the order of 5.5 TeV per nucleon, in case of lead. If compared to the available facilities for the study of nucleus-nucleus collisions (SpS and RHIC), this represents a huge step forward in terms of both volume and energy density that can be attained in nuclear interactions. ALICE (a large ion collider experiment) is the only detector specifically designed for the physics of nuclear collisions at LHC, even though it can also study high cross-section processes occurring in proton-proton collisions. The main goal of the experiment is to observe and study the phase transition from hadronic matter to deconfined partonic matter (quark gluon plasma —QGP). ALICE is conceived as a general-purpose detector and will address most of the phenomena related to the QGP formation at LHC energies: for this purpose, a large fraction of the hadrons, leptons and photons produced in each interaction will be measured and identified.     

Heavy ion collisions at CMS and quark-gluon plasma

One of the most actual goals in high energy physics is reaching the state of deconfinement of hadronic matter and studying the properties of resultant quark-gluon plasma (QGP). Jet production, as well as other hard processes, is considered to be an efficient probe for formation of QGP in future experiments on heavy ion collisions at LHC.The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) is the general purpose detector designed to run at the LHC and optimized mainly for the search of the Higgs boson in proton-proton collisions. However, a good muon system and electromagnetic and hadron calorimeters with fine granularity gives the possibility to cover several important aspects of the heavy ion physics. The production of heavy quarkonia Γ, Γ′, Γ″ through their muon decay channel and the energy loss of hard jets, are valuable processes for studying the phase transition from the hadronic matter to the plasma of deconfined quarks and gluons.     

Quantitative study of the violation of kperpendicular factorization in hadroproduction of quarks at collider energies

We demonstrate the violation of kperpendicular factorization for quark production in high energy hadronic collisions. This violation is quantified in the color glass condensate framework and studied as a function of the quark mass, the quark transverse momentum, and the saturation scale Q(s), which is a measure of large parton densities. At x values where parton densities are large but leading twist shadowing effects are still small, violations of kperpendicularkfactorization can be significant--especially for lighter quarks. At very small x, where leading twist shadowing is large, we show that violations of kperpendicular factorization are relatively weaker.     

Parton rearrangement and fast thermalization in heavyion collisions at RHIC and LHC energies

The implications of parton rearrangement processes on the dynamics of ultra-relativistic heavyion collisions have been investigated. A microscopic transport approach, namely the quark gluon string model (QGSM) which has been extended for a locally density-dependent partonic rearrangement and fusion procedure served as the tool for this investigations. The model emulates effectively the dynamics of a strongly coupled quark plasma and final hadronic interactions. Main QGSM results on anisotropic flow components v ₁ and v ₂ at top RHIC energy are compiled. Predictions for the pseudorapidity dependence of directed and elliptic flow in Pb+Pb collisions under LHC conditions are presented.     

Testing the scale dependence of the scale factor σ eff in double dijet production at the LHC

The scale factor σ _eff is the effective cross section used to characterize the measured rate of inclusive double dijet production in high-energy hadron collisions. It is sensitive to the two-parton distributions in the hadronic projectile. In principle, the scale factor depends on the center of mass energy and on the minimal transverse energy E _T,min? of the jets contributing to the double dijet cross section. Here, we point out that proton–proton collisions at the LHC will provide for the first time experimental access to these scale dependences in a logarithmically wide, nominally perturbative kinematic range 10?E _T,min??100 GeV. This constrains the dependence of two-parton distribution functions on parton momentum fractions and parton localization in impact parameter space. Novel information is to be expected about the transverse growth of hadronic distribution functions in the range of semi-hard Bjorken x (0.001?x?0.1) and high resolution Q ². We discuss to what extent one can disentangle different pictures of the x-evolution of two-parton distributions in the transverse plane by measuring double-hard scattering events at the LHC.     

Jet model with exclusive parton hadron duality

We discuss a model for hadron jets in hard collisions, in which the observed hadrons originate at the end of a purely hadronic cascade. We assume that this hadronic cascade evolves according to the same laws approximately as a parton cascade in QCD. We obtain a simple relation between hadron and parton final states at an almost exclusive level, which allows in many cases to replace partons by hadrons. As application we discuss jet multiplicities at variable resolution, in particular scaling laws, α _s determination and production of axial vector mesons (A ₁ B, ...).     

Expanding quark-gluon plasmas

The expansion and chemical equilibration of a quark-gluon plasma formed in collisions of two heavy nuclei may be described by relativistic fluid dynamics, in combination with chemical rate equations for the different parton species. Using initial conditions obtained from a self-screened parton cascade calculation and allowing for the full three-dimensional expansion of the parton plasma, we make predictions about the life-time of the quark-gluon plasma and the transverse flow velocity at hadronization for Au + Au collisions at RHIC and LHC energy.     

Convective stability of hot matter in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions

The convective stability of strongly interacting matter undergoing hydrodynamic flow in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions is studied in both the quark-gluon plasma and hadron gas phases. We find that this stability depends on the form of the initial conditions assumed for the hydrodynamic flow. In the case of initial conditions corresponding to partial transparency the flow of the quark-gluon plasma is stable whereas the flow of the hadron gas is convectively unstable. The timescale for hydrodynamic oscillations around the (stable or unstable) equilibrium state is found to be larger than the expected lifetime of the system, suggesting that the flow in either case is close to neutral convective equilibrium.     

Partonic effects in heavy ion collisions at RHIC

Effects of partonic interactions in heavy ion collisions at RHIC are studied in a multiphase transport model (AMPT) that includes both initial partonic and final hadronic interactions. It is found that a large parton scattering cross section is needed to understand the measured elliptic flow of pions and two-pion correlation function.     

Longitudinal broadening of quenched jets in turbulent color fields

The nearside distribution of particles at intermediate transverse momentum, associated with a high momentum trigger hadron produced in a high energy heavy-ion collision, is broadened in rapidity compared with the jet cone. This broadened distribution is thought to contain the energy lost by the progenitor parton of the trigger hadron. We show that the broadening can be explained as the final-state deflection of the gluons radiated from the hard parton inside the medium by soft, transversely oriented, turbulent color fields that arise in the presence of plasma instabilities. The magnitude of the effect is found to grow with medium size and density and diminish with increasing energy of the associated hadron.     

(Medium-modified) fragmentation functions

We discuss some of the recent advances in the field of parton fragmentation processes into hadrons as well as their possible modifications in QCD media. Hadron-production data in e ⁺ e ⁻, deep inelastic scattering and hadronic collisions are presented, together with global analyses of fragmentation functions into light and heavy hadrons and developments on parton fragmentation in perturbative QCD at small momentum fraction. Motivated by the recent RHIC data indicating a significant suppression of large-p _⊥ hadron production in heavy-ion collisions, several recent attempts to model medium-modified fragmentation, e.g. by solving “medium” evolution equations or through Monte Carlo studies, have been proposed and are discussed in detail. Finally, we mention the possibility to extract medium-modified fragmentation functions using photon–hadron correlations.     

Forward gluon production in hadron–hadron scattering with pomeron loops

We discuss new physical phenomena expected in particle production in hadron–hadron collisions at high energy, as a consequence of pomeron loop effects in the evolution equations for the color glass condensate. We focus on gluon production in asymmetric, ‘dilute–dense’, collisions: a dilute projectile scatters off a dense hadronic target, whose gluon distribution is highly evolved. This situation is representative for particle production in proton–proton collisions at forward rapidities (say, at LHC) and admits a dipole factorization similar to that of deep inelastic scattering (DIS). We show that at sufficiently large forward rapidities, where the pomeron loop effects become important in the evolution of the target wavefunction, gluon production is dominated by ‘black spots’ (saturated gluon configurations) up to very large values of the transverse momentum, well above the average saturation momentum in the target. In this regime, the produced gluon spectrum exhibits diffusive scaling, so like DIS at sufficiently high energy.