Heavy ion collisions in AdS5

We study heavy ion collisions at strong ?t Hooft coupling using AdS/CFT correspondence. Heavy ion collisions correspond to gravitational shock wave collisions in AdS₅. We construct the metric in the forward light cone after the collision perturbatively through expansion of Einstein equations in graviton exchanges. We obtain an analytic expression for the metric including all-order graviton exchanges with one shock wave, while keeping the exchanges with another shock wave at the lowest order. We read off the corresponding energy-momentum tensor of the produced medium. Unfortunately this energy-momentum tensor does not correspond to ideal hydrodynamics, indicating that higher order graviton exchanges are needed to construct the full solution of the problem. We also show that shock waves must completely stop almost immediately after the collision in AdS₅, which, on the field theory side, corresponds to complete nuclear stopping due to strong coupling effects, likely leading to Landau hydrodynamics. Finally, we perform trapped surface analysis of the shock wave collisions demonstrating that a bulk black hole, corresponding to ideal hydrodynamics on the boundary, has to be created in such collisions, thus constructing a proof of thermalization in heavy ion collisions at strong coupling.     

On logical gates in precipitating medium: Cellular automaton model

We study a two-dimensional semi-totalistic binary cell-state cellular automaton, which imitates a reversible precipitation in an abstract chemical medium. The systems exhibits a non-trivial growth and nucleation. We demonstrate how basic computational operation can be realized in the system when the propagation of the growing patterns is self-restricted by stationary localizations. We show that precipitating patterns of different morphology compete between each other and thus implement basic logical gates.     

Geminate recombination processes induced by rare gas collisions with predissociating NaI molecules prepared by femtosecond excitation

NaI molecules predissociate after excitation with ultrashort pulses at a peak wavelength of 320 nm. In rare gas environments at higher pressures the process of geminate recombination is likely to occur. We studied the dynamics of these processes under various pressure conditions and for different collision partners. The calculations were performed within a three-dimensional statistical model which simulates the NaI wave-packet dynamics with classical trajectories and the collisions via an instantaneous hard-sphere scattering. Received: 4 May 1998 / Accepted: 27 July 1998 / Published online: 28 September 1998     

Dynamics of hard rods in one dimension

We examine a system consisting ofN classical, Newtonian, perfectly elastic hard rods constrained to move on a line. The mass and length of each rod are arbitrary. We develop an algorithm which gives, after any given possible sequence of collisions, the new velocities of theN rods and a necessary condition for any given pair of rods to be involved in the next collision, all in terms of the initial velocities of the rods. These results are then used to prove that for the case where there are exactly three rods on the line, the maximum possible number of collisions among them is the largest integern such that , wherem ₂ is the mass of the central particle and ₁₂ and ₂₃ are the reduced masses of the left and right particle pairs. We further derive for this three-particle case a condition on the initial velocities which is necessary and sufficient fork collisions, 1<kn, to occur, as well as explicit expressions for the velocities after each collision in terms of the initial velocities.     

Tagged jets and jet reconstruction as a probe of the quark-gluon plasma

The large center-of-mass energies available to the heavy-ion program at the LHC and recent experimental advances at RHIC will enable QCD matter at very high temperatures and energy densities, that is, the quark-gluon plasma (QGP), to be probed in unprecedented ways. Fully-reconstructed inclusive jets and the away-side hadron showers associated with electroweak bosons, that is, tagged jets, are among these exciting new probes. Full jet reconstruction provides an experimental window into the mechanisms of quark and gluon dynamics in the QGP which is not accessible via leading particles and leading particle correlations. Theoretical advances in these exciting new fields of research can help resolve some of the most controversial points in heavy ion physics today such as the significance of the radiative, collisional and dissociative processes in the QGP and the applicability of strong versus weak coupling regimes to describe jet production and propagation. In this proceedings, I will present results on the production and subsequent suppression of high energy jets tagged with Z bosons in relativistic heavy-ion collisions at RHIC and LHC energies using the Gyulassy-Levai-Vitev (GLV) parton energy loss approach.