Vortical fluid and Λ\Lambda spin correlations in high-energy heavy-ion collisions

Fermions become polarized in a vortical fluid due to spin-vorticity coupling. The spin polarization density is proportional to the local fluid vorticity at the next-to-leading order of a gradient expansion in a quantum kinetic theory. Spin correlations of two $\Lambda$-hyperons can therefore reveal the vortical structure of the dense matter in high-energy heavy-ion collisions. We employ a (3+1)D viscous hydrodynamic model with event-by-event fluctuating initial conditions from A MultiPhase Transport (AMPT) model to calculate the vorticity distributions and $\Lambda$ spin correlations. The azimuthal correlation of the transverse spin is shown to have a cosine form plus an offset due to a circular structure of the transverse vorticity around the beam direction and global spin polarization. The longitudinal spin correlation shows a structure of vortex-pairing in the transverse plane due to the convective flow of hot spots in the radial direction. The dependence on colliding energy, rapidity, centrality and sensitivity to the shear viscosity are also investigated.Comment: 5 pages in Latex, 3 figure

Mini-jet thermalization and diffusion of transverse momentum correlation in high-energy heavy-ion collisions

Transverse momentum correlation in azimuthal angle of produced hadrons due to mini-jets are studied first within the HIJING Monte Carlo model in high-energy heavy-ion collisions. Jet quenching in the early stage of thermalization is shown to lead to significant diffusion (broadening) of the correlation. Evolution of the transverse momentum density fluctuation that gives rise to such correlation in azimuthal angle in the later stage of heavy-ion collisions is further investigated within a linearized diffusion-like equation and is shown to be determined by the shear viscosity of the evolving dense matter. Such a diffusion equation for the transverse momentum fluctuation is solved with initial values given by HIJING and together with the hydrodynamic equation for the bulk medium. The final transverse momentum correlation in azimuthal angle is calculated along the freeze-out hyper-surface and is found further diffused for larger values of shear viscosity to entropy density ratio $\eta/s \sim 0.2-0.4$. Therefore the final transverse momentum correlation in azimuthal angle can be used to study the thermalization of mini-jets in the early stage of heavy-ion collisions and the viscous effect in the hydrodynamic evolution of the strongly coupled quark gluon plasma.Comment: RevTex 4, 4 pages and 2 figures, the method to determine the fluctuation in transverse fluid velocity in the initial time of the hydro evolution has been improved. The relevant parts have been rewritten with some discussions and references adde

The non-Abelian feature of parton energy loss in energy dependence of jet quenching in high-energy heavy-ion collisions

One of the non-Abelian features of parton energy loss is the ratio $\Delta E_g/\Delta E_q=9/4$ between gluon and quark jets. Since jet production rate is dominated by quark jets at high $x_T=2p_T/\sqrt{s}$ and by gluon jets at low $x_T$, high $p_T$ hadron suppression in high-energy heavy-ion collisions should reflect such a non-Abelian feature. Within a leading order perturbative QCD parton model that incorporates transverse expansion and Woods-Saxon nuclear distribution, the energy dependence of large $p_T\sim 5-20$ GeV/$c$ hadron suppression is found to be sensitive to the non-Abelian feasture of parton energy loss and could be tested by data from low energy runs at RHIC or data from LHC.Comment: RevTex 4, 7 pages, 3 figure

Effects of initial flow velocity fluctuation in event-by-event (3+1)D hydrodynamics

Hadron spectra and elliptic flow in high-energy heavy-ion collisions are studied within a (3+1)D ideal hydrodynamic model with fluctuating initial conditions given by the AMPT Monte Carlo model. Results from event-by-event simulations are compared with experimental data at both RHIC and LHC energies. Fluctuations in the initial energy density come from not only the number of coherent soft interactions of overlapping nucleons but also incoherent semi-hard parton scatterings in each binary nucleon collision. Mini-jets from semi-hard parton scatterings are assumed to be locally thermalized through a Gaussian smearing and give rise to non-vanishing initial local flow velocities. Fluctuations in the initial flow velocities lead to harder transverse momentum spectra of final hadrons due to non-vanishing initial radial flow velocities. Initial fluctuations in rapidity distributions lead to expanding hot spots in the longitudinal direction and are shown to cause a sizable reduction of final hadron elliptic flow at large transverse momenta.Comment: 17 pages in RevTex, 18 figures, final version published in PR