44 research outputs found
A relativistic parton cascade with radiation
We consider the evolution of a parton system which is formed at the central
rapidity region just after an ultrarelativistic heavy ion collision. The
evolution of the system, which is composed of gluons, quarks and antiquarks, is
described by a relativistic Boltzmann equations with collision terms including
radiation and retardation effects. The equations are solved by the test
particle method using Monte-Carlo sampling. Our simulations do not show any
evidence of kinetic equilibration, unless the cross sections are artificially
increased to unrealistically large values.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figure
Preheating with Trilinear Interactions: Tachyonic Resonance
We investigate the effects of bosonic trilinear interactions in preheating
after chaotic inflation. A trilinear interaction term allows for the complete
decay of the massive inflaton particles, which is necessary for the transition
to radiation domination. We found that typically the trilinear term is
subdominant during early stages of preheating, but it actually amplifies
parametric resonance driven by the four-legs interaction. In cases where the
trilinear term does dominate during preheating, the process occurs through
periodic tachyonic amplifications with resonance effects, which is so effective
that preheating completes within a few inflaton oscillations. We develop an
analytic theory of this process, which we call tachyonic resonance. We also
study numerically the influence of trilinear interactions on the dynamics after
preheating. The trilinear term eventually comes to dominate after preheating,
leading to faster rescattering and thermalization than could occur without it.
Finally, we investigate the role of non-renormalizable interaction terms during
preheating. We find that if they are present they generally dominate (while
still in a controllable regime) in chaotic inflation models. Preheating due to
these terms proceeds through a modified form of tachyonic resonance.Comment: 19 pages, 10 figures, refs added, published versio
Does parton saturation at high density explain hadron multiplicities at RHIC ?
We discuss the recent claim that hadron multiplicities measured at RHIC
energies are directly described in terms of gluon degrees of freedom fixed from
the initial conditions of central heavy ion collisions. The argument is based
on the parton saturation scenario expected to be valid at high parton densities
and on the assumption of conserved gluon number. Alternatively we conjecture
that "bottom-up" equilibration before hadronization modifies this picture, due
to nonconservation of the number of gluons.Comment: 8 page
On the microscopic dynamics of DCC formation
The dynamics of the pion field after a quench is studied in the framework of
the linear sigma model. Our aim is to determine to what extent the amplified
pion field resembles the DCC picture originally proposed in the early '90s. We
present the result of a computer experiment where, among other things, we study
in detail the correlation between isospin orientations of the distinct modes of
the field. We show that this correlation is absent. In a sense, the distinct
modes behave as distinct DCCs. The implications of this observation are
discussed.Comment: 19 pages, Latex2e, 7 figures in EPS, uses (included) boldgreek.sty
and standard epsf package
Supersymmetric Thermalization and Quasi-Thermal Universe: Consequences for Gravitinos and Leptogenesis
Motivated by our earlier paper \cite{am}, we discuss how the infamous
gravitino problem has a natural built in solution within supersymmetry.
Supersymmetry allows a large number of flat directions made up of {\it gauge
invariant} combinations of squarks and sleptons. Out of many at least {\it one}
generically obtains a large vacuum expectation value during inflation. Gauge
bosons and Gauginos then obtain large masses by virtue of the Higgs mechanism.
This makes the rate of thermalization after the end of inflation very small and
as a result the Universe enters a {\it quasi-thermal phase} after the inflaton
has completely decayed. A full thermal equilibrium is generically established
much later on when the flat direction expectation value has substantially
decareased. This results in low reheat temperatures, i.e., , which are compatible with the stringent bounds arising from the
big bang nucleosynthesis. There are two very important implications: the
production of gravitinos and generation of a baryonic asymmetry via
leptogenesis during the quasi-thermal phase. In both the cases the abundances
depend not only on an effective temperature of the quasi-thermal phase (which
could be higher, i.e., ), but also on the state of equilibrium
in the reheat plasma. We show that there is no ``thermal gravitino problem'' at
all within supersymmetry and we stress on a need of a new paradigm based on a
``quasi-thermal leptogenesis'', because in the bulk of the parameter space the
{\it old} thermal leptogenesis cannot account for the observed baryon
asymmetry.Comment: 53 pages. Final version published in JCA
Out-of-equilibrium electromagnetic radiation
We derive general formulas for photon and dilepton production rates from an
arbitrary non-equilibrated medium from first principles in quantum field
theory. At lowest order in the electromagnetic coupling constant, these relate
the rates to the unequal-time in-medium photon polarization tensor and
generalize the corresponding expressions for a system in thermodynamic
equilibrium. We formulate the question of electromagnetic radiation in real
time as an initial value problem and consistently describe the virtual
electromagnetic dressing of the initial state. In the limit of slowly evolving
systems, we recover known expressions for the emission rates and work out the
first correction to the static formulas in a systematic gradient expansion.
Finally, we discuss the possible application of recently developed techniques
in non-equilibrium quantum field theory to the problem of electromagnetic
radiation. We argue, in particular, that the two-particle-irreducible (2PI)
effective action formalism provides a powerful resummation scheme for the
description of multiple scattering effects, such as the
Landau-Pomeranchuk-Migdal suppression recently discussed in the context of
equilibrium QCD.Comment: 34 pages, 9 figures, uses JHEP3.cl
Thermal Photons in Strong Interactions
A brief survey is given on the current status of evaluating thermal
production of photons from a strongly interacting medium. Emphasis is put on
recent progress in assessing equilibrium emission rates in both hadronic and
quark-gluon matter. We also give an update on the status of comparing
theoretical calculations with experimental data from heavy-ion collisions at
the SPS, as well as prospects for RHIC. Finally, applications of photon rate
calculations to colorsuperconducting quark matter are discussed.Comment: Brief Review for Mod. Phys. Lett A, 15 pages latex incl. 12 ps/eps
figs and style file ws-mpla.cl
Photon Physics in Heavy Ion Collisions at the LHC
Various pion and photon production mechanisms in high-energy nuclear
collisions at RHIC and LHC are discussed. Comparison with RHIC data is done
whenever possible. The prospect of using electromagnetic probes to characterize
quark-gluon plasma formation is assessed.Comment: Writeup of the working group "Photon Physics" for the CERN Yellow
Report on "Hard Probes in Heavy Ion Collisions at the LHC", 134 pages. One
figure added in chapter 5 (comparison with PHENIX data). Some figures and
correponding text corrected in chapter 6 (off-chemical equilibrium thermal
photon rates). Some figures modified in chapter 7 (off-chemical equilibrium
photon rates) and comparison with PHENIX data adde