Hadronization of Dense Partonic Matter

The parton recombination model has turned out to be a valuable tool to describe hadronization in high energy heavy ion collisions. I review the model and revisit recent progress in our understanding of hadron correlations. I also discuss higher Fock states in the hadrons, possible violations of the elliptic flow scaling and recombination effects in more dilute systems.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures; plenary talk delivered at SQM 2006, to appear in J. Phys.

Probing Nuclear Matter with Jet Conversions

We discuss the flavor of leading jet partons as a valuable probe of nuclear matter. We point out that the coupling of jets to nuclear matter naturally leads to an alteration of jet chemistry even at high transverse momentum $p_T$. In particular, QCD jets coupling to a chemically equilibrated quark gluon plasma in nuclear collisions, will lead to hadron ratios at high transverse momentum $p_T$ that can differ significantly from their counterparts in $p+p$ collisions. Flavor measurements could complement energy loss as a way to study interactions of hard QCD jets with nuclear matter. Roughly speaking they probe the inverse mean free path $1/\lambda$, while energy loss probes the average squared momentum transfer $\mu^2/\lambda$. We present some estimates for the rate of jet conversions in a consistent Fokker-Planck framework and their impact on future high-$p_T$ identified hadron measurements at RHIC and LHC. We also suggest some novel observables to test flavor effects.Comment: 12 pages, 11 figures, version to appear in PR

The Skyrme Model piNN Form Factor and the Sea Quark Distribution of the Nucleon

We calculate the sea quark distribution of the nucleon in a meson cloud model. The novel feature of our calculation is the implementation of a special piNN form factor recently obtained by Holzwarth and Machleidt. This form factor is hard for small and soft for large momentum transfers. We show that this feature leads to a substantial improvement.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures; v2: some typos corrected, including eq. (9

Early Time Evolution of High Energy Heavy Ion Collisions

We solve the Yang-Mills equations in the framework of the McLerran-Venugopalan model for small times tau after a collision of two nuclei. An analytic expansion around tau=0 leads to explicit results for the field strength and the energy momentum tensor of the gluon field at early times. We then discuss constraints for the energy density, pressure and flow of the plasma phase that emerges after thermalization of the gluon field.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure; contribution to Quark Matter 2006; submitted to J. Phys.

Quark Recombination and Heavy Quark Diffusion in Hot Nuclear Matter

We discuss resonance recombination for quarks and show that it is compatible with quark and hadron distributions in local thermal equilibrium. We then calculate realistic heavy quark phase space distributions in heavy ion collisions using Langevin simulations with non-perturbative T-matrix interactions in hydrodynamic backgrounds. We hadronize the heavy quarks on the critical hypersurface given by hydrodynamics after constructing a criterion for the relative recombination and fragmentation contributions. We discuss the influence of recombination and flow on the resulting heavy meson and single electron R_AA and elliptic flow. We will also comment on the effect of diffusion of open heavy flavor mesons in the hadronic phase.Comment: Contribution to Quark Matter 2011, submitted to J.Phys.G; 4 pages, 5 figure

Polarized antiquark flavor asymmetry: Pauli blocking vs. the pion cloud

The flavor asymmetry of the unpolarized antiquark distributions in the proton, dbar(x) - ubar(x) > 0, can qualitatively be explained either by Pauli blocking by the valence quarks, or as an effect of the pion cloud of the nucleon. In contrast, predictions for the polarized asymmetry Delta_ubar(x) - Delta_dbar(x) based on rho meson contributions disagree even in sign with the Pauli blocking picture. We show that in the meson cloud picture a large positive Delta_ubar(x) - Delta_dbar(x) is obtained from pi-N - sigma-N interference-type contributions, as suggested by chiral symmetry. This effect restores the equivalence of the 'quark' and 'meson' descriptions also in the polarized case.Comment: 4 pages, revtex, 3 eps figure

Studying Intermediate pT Hadron Production with Fluctuations

Mechanisms for particle production at intermediate pT in nuclear collisions at RHIC are discussed, emphasizing the differences in associated jet-like correlations between color-neutral and colored production. An alternative production mechanism involving both recombination and fragmentation is suggested, which might simultaneously lead to an enhancement of baryons and to jet-like correlations. To gain more insight into the relative importance of different mechanisms a study of constrained distributions of associated multiplicity is proposed. In a simple model it is shown that these multiplicity distributions may change significantly, if the nature of the production mechanism fluctuates from event to event.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, talk at Hot Quarks 2004 conferenc

Early Time Dynamics of Gluon Fields in High Energy Nuclear Collisions

Nuclei colliding at very high energy create a strong, quasi-classical gluon field during the initial phase of their interaction. We present an analytic calculation of the initial space-time evolution of this field in the limit of very high energies using a formal recursive solution of the Yang-Mills equations. We provide analytic expressions for the initial chromo-electric and chromo-magnetic fields and for their energy-momentum tensor. In particular, we discuss event-averaged results for energy density and energy flow as well as for longitudinal and transverse pressure of this system. For example, we find that the ratio of longitudinal to transverse pressure very early in the system behaves as $p_L/p_T = -[1-\frac{3}{2a}(Q\tau)^2]/[1-\frac{1}{a}(Q\tau)^2]+\mathcal{O}(Q\tau)^4$ where $\tau$ is the longitudinal proper time, $Q$ is related to the saturation scales $Q_s$ of the two nuclei, and $a = \ln (Q^2/\hat{m}^2)$ with $\hat m$ a scale to be defined later. Our results are generally applicable if $\tau \lesssim 1/Q$. As already discussed in a previous paper, the transverse energy flow $S^i$ of the gluon field exhibits hydrodynamic-like contributions that follow transverse gradients of the energy density $\nabla^i \varepsilon$. In addition, a rapidity-odd energy flow also emerges from the non-abelian analog of Gauss' Law and generates non-vanishing angular momentum of the field. We will discuss the space-time picture that emerges from our analysis and its implications for observables in heavy ion collisions.Comment: 26 pages, 9 figure