Quasi-Particle Degrees of Freedom versus the Perfect Fluid as Descriptors of the Quark-Gluon Plasma

Details Quasi-Particle Degrees of Freedom versus the Perfect Fluid as Descriptors of the Quark-Gluon Plasma Quasi-Particle Degrees of Freedom versus the Perfect Fluid as Descriptors of the Quark-Gluon Plasma

2007-09-19

arxiv.org/abs/0709.3105v2

Phys.Rev.C78:044905,2008

Physics

Nuclear Physics

Nuclear Theory

9 pages, 7 figures, Updated text and figures

Scientific paper

10.1103/PhysRevC.78.044905

The hot nuclear matter created at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) has been characterized by near-perfect fluid behavior. We demonstrate that this stands in contradiction to the identification of QCD quasi-particles with the thermodynamic degrees of freedom in the early (fluid) stage of heavy ion collisions. The empirical observation of constituent quark ``$n_q$'' scaling of elliptic flow is juxtaposed with the lack of such scaling behavior in hydrodynamic fluid calculations followed by Cooper-Frye freeze-out to hadrons. A ``quasi-particle transport'' time stage after viscous effects break down the hydrodynamic fluid stage, but prior to hadronization, is proposed to reconcile these apparent contradictions. However, without a detailed understanding of the transitions between these stages, the ``$n_q$'' scaling is not a necessary consequence of this prescription. Also, if the duration of this stage is too short, it may not support well defined quasi-particles. By comparing and contrasting the coalescence of quarks into hadrons with the similar process of producing light nuclei from nucleons, it is shown that the observation of ``$n_{q}$'' scaling in the final state does not necessarily imply that the constituent degrees of freedom were the relevant ones in the initial state.

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