Effective description of dark matter as a viscous fluid

Treating dark matter at large scales as an effectively viscous fluid provides an improved framework for the calculation of the density and velocity power spectra compared to the standard assumption of an ideal pressureless fluid. We discuss how this framework can be made concrete through an appropriate coarse-graining procedure. We also review results that demonstrate that it improves the convergence of cosmological perturbation theory.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, talk by N. Tetradis at Quarks-2016, includes unpublished materia

Jet quenching via jet collimation

The strong modifications of dijet properties in heavy ion collisions measured by ATLAS and CMS provide important constraints on the dynamical mechanisms underlying jet quenching. In this work, we show that the transport of soft gluons away from the jet cone - jet collimation - can account for the observed dijet asymmetry with values of $\hat{q}\, L$ that lie in the expected order of magnitude. Further, we show that the energy loss attained through this mechanism results in a very mild distortion of the azimuthal angle dijet distribution.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures; Proceedings of the "Quark Matter 2011" conferenc

The complex environment of the bright carbon star TX Psc as probed by spectro-astrometry

Context: Stars on the asymptotic giant branch (AGB) show broad evidence of inhomogeneous atmospheres and circumstellar envelopes. These have been studied by a variety of methods on various angular scales. In this paper we explore the envelope of the well-studied carbon star TX Psc by the technique of spectro-astrometry. Aims: We explore the potential of this method for detecting asymmetries around AGB stars. Methods:We obtained CRIRES observations of several CO $\Delta$v=1 lines near 4.6 $\mu$m and HCN lines near 3 $\mu$m in 2010 and 2013. These were then searched for spectro-astrometric signatures. For the interpretation of the results, we used simple simulated observations. Results: Several lines show significant photocentre shifts with a clear dependence on position angle. In all cases, tilde-shaped signatures are found where the positive and negative shifts (at PA 0deg) are associated with blue and weaker red components of the lines. The shifts can be modelled with a bright blob 70 mas to 210 mas south of the star with a flux of several percent of the photospheric flux. We estimate a lower limit of the blob temperature of 1000 K. The blob may be related to a mass ejection as found for AGB stars or red supergiants. We also consider the scenario of a companion object. Conclusions: Although there is clear spectro-astrometric evidence of a rather prominent structure near TX Psc, it does not seem to relate to the other evidence of asymmetries, so no definite explanation can be given. Our data thus underline the very complex structure of the environment of this star, but further observations that sample the angular scales out to a few hundred milli-arcseconds are needed to get a clearer picture

Dissipative Hydrodynamics and Heavy Ion Collisions

Recent discussions of RHIC data emphasized the exciting possibility that the matter produced in nucleus-nucleus collisions shows properties of a near-perfect fluid. Here, we aim at delineating the applicability of fluid dynamics, which is needed to quantify the size of corresponding dissipative effects. We start from the equations for dissipative fluid dynamics, which we derive from kinetic theory up to second order (Israel-Stewart theory) in a systematic gradient expansion. In model studies, we then establish that for too early initialization of the hydrodynamic evolution (\tau_0 \lsim 1 fm/c) or for too high transverse momentum (p_T \gsim 1 GeV) in the final state, the expected dissipative corrections are too large for a fluid description to be reliable. Moreover, viscosity-induced modifications of hadronic transverse momentum spectra can be accommodated to a significant degree in an ideal fluid description by modifications of the decoupling stage. We argue that these conclusions, drawn from model studies, can also be expected to arise in significantly more complex, realistic fluid dynamics simulations of heavy ion collisions.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figures, uses revtex4; v2: references added, typos correcte

Two-particle interferometry for non-central heavy-ion collisions

In non-central heavy ion collisions, identical two particle Hanbury-Brown/Twiss (HBT) correlations C(K,q) depend on the azimuthal direction of the pair momentum K. We investigate the consequences for a harmonic analysis of the corresponding HBT radius parameters. Our discussion includes both, a model- independent analysis of these parameters in the Gaussian approximation, and the study of a class of hydrodynamical models which mimic essential geometrical and dynamical properties of peripheral heavy ion collisions. Also, we discuss the additional geometrical and dynamical information contained in the harmonic coefficients of these HBT radius parameters. The leading contribution of their first and second harmonics are found to satisfy simple constraints. This allows for a minimal, azimuthally sensitive parametrization of all first and second harmonic coefficients in terms of only two additional fit parameters. We determine to what extent these parameters can be extracted from experimental data despite finite multiplicity fluctuations and the resulting uncertainty in the reconstruction of the reaction plane.Comment: 14 pages, RevTeX, 7 eps-figures include

Identified Hadrons and Jet Chemistry for p+p and Au+Au Collisions at RHIC

The study of hadron spectra at high $p_{T}$ in p+p collisions provides a good test of perturbative quantum chromo-dynamic calculations (pQCD) and baseline for measurements of nuclear modification factors in Au+Au collisions. Using events triggered by the Barrel Electro-Magnetic Calorimeter, identified charged hadron transverse momentum ($p_T$) spectra are measured up to 15 GeV/$c$ at mid-rapidity ($\mid y\mid$ $<$ 0.5) and neutral kaon $p_T$ spectra up to 12 GeV/$c$ in p + p collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 200 GeV. The particle ratios of $p/\pi^{+}$, $\bar{p}/\pi^{-}$ and $K^{\pm,0}$ / $\pi^{\pm}$ in p + p collisions are shown and compared with next-to-leading order pQCD calculations. In central Au+Au collisions, we report nuclear modification factors ($R_{AA}$) for pion, kaon, proton and $\rho$ and discuss several model calculations: color-charge dependence of jet quenching and jet conversion. Finally, centrality dependence of $R_{AA}$ at high $p_T$ ($>$ 5.5 GeV/c) for kaon are compared with that of pion in Au + Au collisions at 200 GeV.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, SQM 2009 contributio

Flow effects on the freeze-out phase-space density in heavy ion collisions

The strong longitudinal expansion of the reaction zone formed in relativistic heavy-ion collisions is found to significantly reduce the spatially averaged pion phase-space density, compared to naive estimates based on thermal distributions. This has important implications for data interpretation and leads to larger values for the extracted pion chemical potential at kinetic freeze-out.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures included via epsfig, added discussion of different transverse density profiles, 1 new figur

Violation of Wiedemann-Franz law at the Kondo breakdown quantum critical point

We study both the electrical and thermal transport near the heavy-fermion quantum critical point (QCP), identified with the breakdown of the Kondo effect as an orbital selective Mott transition. We show that the contribution to the electrical conductivity comes mainly from conduction electrons while the thermal conductivity is given by both conduction electrons and localized fermions (spinons), scattered with dynamical exponent $z = 3$. This scattering mechanism gives rise to a quasi-linear temperature dependence of the electrical and thermal resistivity. The characteristic feature of the Kondo breakdown scenario turns out to be emergence of additional entropy carriers, that is, spinon excitations. As a result, we find that the Wiedemann-Franz ratio should be larger than the standard value, a fact which enables to differentiate the Kondo breakdown scenario from the Hertz-Moriya-Millis framework

Role of the van Hove Singularity in the Quantum Criticality of the Hubbard Model

A quantum critical point (QCP), separating the non-Fermi liquid region from the Fermi liquid, exists in the phase diagram of the 2D Hubbard model [Vidhyadhiraja et. al, Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 206407 (2009)]. Due to the vanishing of the critical temperature associated with a phase separation transition, the QCP is characterized by a vanishing quasiparticle weight. Near the QCP, the pairing is enhanced since the real part of the bare d-wave p-p susceptibility exhibits algebraic divergence with decreasing temperature, replacing the logarithmic divergence found in a Fermi liquid [Yang et. al, Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 047004 (2011)]. In this paper we explore the single-particle and transport properties near the QCP. We focus mainly on a van Hove singularity (vHS) coming from the relatively flat dispersion that crosses the Fermi level near the quantum critical filling. The flat part of the dispersion orthogonal to the antinodal direction remains pinned near the Fermi level for a range of doping that increases when we include a negative next-near-neighbor hopping t' in the model. For comparison, we calculate the bare d-wave pairing susceptibility for non-interacting models with the usual two-dimensional tight binding dispersion and a hypothetical quartic dispersion. We find that neither model yields a vHS that completely describes the critical algebraic behavior of the bare d-wave pairing susceptibility. The resistivity, thermal conductivity, thermopower, and the Wiedemann-Franz Law are examined in the Fermi liquid, marginal Fermi liquid, and pseudo-gap doping regions. A negative next-near-neighbor hopping t' increases the doping region with marginal Fermi liquid character. Both T and negative t' are relevant variables for the QCP, and both the transport and the motion of the vHS with filling suggest that they are qualitatively similar in their effect.Comment: 15 pages, 17 figure

Nuclear collisions at the Future Circular Collider

The Future Circular Collider is a new proposed collider at CERN with centre-of-mass energies around 100 TeV in the pp mode. Ongoing studies aim at assessing its physics potential and technical feasibility. Here we focus on updates in physics opportunities accessible in pA and AA collisions not covered in previous Quark Matter contributions, including Quark-Gluon Plasma and gluon saturation studies, novel hard probes of QCD matter, and photon-induced collisions.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, proceedings of Quark Matter 201