Elliptic Flow and Shear Viscosity within a Transport Approach from RHIC to LHC Energy

We have investigated the build up of anisotropic flows within a parton cascade approach at fixed shear viscosity to entropy density \eta/s to study the generation of collective flows in ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions. We present a study of the impact of a temperature dependent \eta/s(T) on the generation of the elliptic flow at both RHIC and LHC. Finally we show that the transport approach, thanks to its wide validity range, is able to describe naturally the rise - fall and saturation of the v_2(p_T) observed at LHC.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, proceedings of the workshop EPIC@LHC, 6-8 July 2011, Bari, Ital

Elliptic Flow from Non-equilibrium Initial Condition with a Saturation Scale

A current goal of relativistic heavy ion collisions experiments is the search for a Color Glass Condensate as the limiting state of QCD matter at very high density. In viscous hydrodynamics simulations, a standard Glauber initial condition leads to estimate $4\pi \eta/s \sim 1$, while a Color Glass Condensate modeling leads to at least a factor of 2 larger $\eta/s$. Within a kinetic theory approach based on a relativistic Boltzmann-like transport simulation, we point out that the out-of-equilibrium initial distribution proper of a Color Glass Condensate reduces the efficiency in building-up the elliptic flow. Our main result at RHIC energy is that the available data on $v_2$ are in agreement with a $4\pi \eta/s \sim 1$ also for Color Glass Condensate initial conditions, opening the possibility to describe self-consistently also higher order flow, otherwise significantly underestimated, and to pursue further the search for signatures of the Color Glass Condensate.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures. // Title changed, some discussion added, main conclusions unchanged. Version accepted for publication on Phys. Lett.

Does the NJL chiral phase transition affect the elliptic flow of a fluid at fixed η/s\eta/s?

We have derived and solved numerically the Boltzmann-Vlasov transport equations that includes both two-body collisions and the chiral phase transition by mean of NJL-field dynamics. The scope is to understand if the field dynamics supply new genuine effects on the build-up of the elliptic flow $v_2$, a measure of the asymmetry in the momentum space, and in particular if it can affect the relation between $v_2$ and the shear viscosity to entropy ratio $\eta/s$. Solving the transport equation with a constant cross section for the condition of $Au+Au$ collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200$ AGeV it is shown a sizable suppression of $v_2$ due to the attractive nature of the field dynamics that generates the constituent mass. However the key result is that if $\eta/s$ of the system is kept fixed by an appropriate local renormalization of the cross section the $v_2$ does not depend on the details of the collisional and/or field dynamics and in particular it is not affected significantly by the chiral phase transition.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Elliptic flow and shear viscosity from a beam energy scan

We study within a relativistic transport approach the impact of a temperature dependent shear viscosity to entropy density ratio, η/s(T), on the build-up of the elliptic flow, v2, a measure of the angular anisotropy in the particle production. Beam Energy Scan from √sNN = 62.4GeV at RHIC up to 2.76TeV at LHC has shown that the v2(pT ) as a function of the transverse momentum pT appears to be nearly invariant with energy. We show that such a surprising behavior is determined by a rise and fall of η/s(T) with a minimum at T ∼ Tc, as one would expect if the matter undergoes a phase transition or a cross-over

Shear viscosity to electric conductivity ratio of the QGP

The transport coefficients of strongly interacting matter are currently subject of intense theoretical and phenomenological studies due to their relevance for the characterization of the quark-gluon plasma produced in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions (uRHIC). We predict that (η/s)/(σel/T), independently on the running coupling αs(T), should increase up to about ~ 20 for T → Tc, while it goes down to a nearly flat behavior around ≃ 4 for T ≥ 4 Tc. Therefore we find a stronger T-dependence of σel/T with respect to η/s that in a quasiparticle approach is constrained by lQCD thermodynamics. A conformal theory, instead, predicts a similar T dependence of η/s and σel/T