Zhi Qiu

Event-by-event shape and flow fluctuations of relativistic heavy-ion collision fireballs

Heavy-ion collisions create deformed quark-gluon plasma (QGP) fireballs which explode anisotropically. The viscosity of the fireball matter determines its ability to convert the initial spatial deformation into momentum anisotropies that can be measured in the final hadron spectra. A quantitatively precise empirical extraction of the QGP viscosity thus requires a good understanding of the initial fireball deformation. This deformation fluctuates from event to event, and so does the finally observed momentum anisotropy. We present a harmonic decomposition of the initial fluctuations in shape and orientation of the fireball and perform event-by-event (2 + 1)-dimensional ideal fluid dynamical simulations to extract the resulting fluctuations in the magnitude and direction of the corresponding harmonic components of the final anisotropic flow at midrapidity. The final harmonic flow coefficients are found to depend nonlinearly on the initial harmonic eccentricity coefficients. We show that, on average, initial density fluctuations suppress the buildup of elliptic flow relative to what one obtains from a smooth initial profile of the same eccentricity and discuss implications for the phenomenological extraction of the QGP shear viscosity from experimental elliptic flow data.

The iEBE-VISHNU code package for relativistic heavy-ion collisions

The iEBE-VISHNU code package performs event-by-event simulations for relativistic heavy-ion collisions using a hybrid approach based on (2+1)-dimensional viscous hydrodynamics coupled to a hadronic cascade model. We present the detailed model implementation, accompanied by some numerical code tests for the package. iEBE-VISHNU forms the core of a general theoretical framework for model-data comparisons through large scale Monte-Carlo simulations. A numerical interface between the hydrodynamically evolving medium and thermal photon radiation is also discussed. This interface is more generally designed for calculations of all kinds of rare probes that are coupled to the temperature and flow velocity evolution of the bulk medium, such as jet energy loss and heavy quark diffusion.

Hydrodynamic event-plane correlations in Pb+Pb collisions at

Abstract The recently measured correlations between the flow angles associated with higher harmonics in the anisotropic flow generated in relativistic heavy-ion collisions are shown to be of hydrodynamic origin. The correlation strength is found to be sensitive to both the initial conditions and the shear viscosity of the expanding fireball medium.

\sqrt{s}=2.76

Event-by-event fluctuations in the initial density distributions of the fireballs created in relativistic heavy-ion collisions lead to event-by-event fluctuations of the final anisotropic flow angles, and density inhomogeneities in the initial state cause these flow angles to vary with the transverse momentum of the emitted particles. It is shown that these effects lead to characteristically different transverse momentum dependencies for anisotropic flow coefficients extracted from different experimental methods. These differences can be used to experimentally constrain flow angle fluctuations in the final state of heavy-ion collisions which, in turn, are sensitive to the initial-state density fluctuations and the shear viscosity of the expanding fireball medium.

ATeV

With the new viscous hydrodynamic + hadron cascade hybrid code VISHNU, a rather precise () extraction of the quark gluon plasma (QGP) shear viscosity (?/s)QGP from heavy-ion elliptic flow data is possible if the initial eccentricity of the collision fireball is known with <5% accuracy. At this point, eccentricities from initial state models differ by up to 20%, leading to an uncertainty for (?/s)QGP. It is shown that a simultaneous comparison of elliptic and triangular flow, v2 and v3, puts strong constraints on initial state models and can largely eliminate the present uncertainty in (?/s)QGP. The variation of the differential elliptic flow v2(pT) for identified hadrons between RHIC and LHC energies provides additional tests of the evolution model.

Fluctuating flow angles and anisotropic flow measurements

In ultra-central heavy-ion collisions, anisotropic hydrodynamic flow is generated by density fluctuations in the initial state rather than by geometric overlap effects. For a given centrality class, the initial fluctuation spectrum is sensitive to the method chosen for binning the events into centrality classes. We show that sorting events by total initial entropy or by total final multiplicity yields event classes with equivalent statistical fluctuation properties, in spite of viscous entropy production during the fireball evolution. With this initial entropy-based centrality definition we generate several classes of ultra-central Pb+Pb collisions at LHC energies and evolve the events using viscous hydrodynamics with non-zero shear but vanishing bulk viscosity. Comparing the predicted anisotropic flow coefficients for charged hadrons with CMS data we find that both the Monte Carlo Glauber (MC-Glb) and Monte Carlo Kharzeev-Levin-Nardi (MC-KLN) models produce initial fluctuation spectra that are incompatible with the measured final anisotropic flow power spectrum, for any choice of the specific shear viscosity. In spite of this failure, we show that the hydrodynamic model can qualitatively explain, in terms of event-by-event fluctuations of the anisotropic flow coefficients and flow angles, the breaking of flow factorization for elliptic, triangular and quadrangular flow measured by the CMS experiment. For elliptic flow, this factorization breaking is large in ultra-central collisions. We conclude that the bulk of the experimentally observed flow factorization breaking effects are qualitatively explained by hydrodynamic evolution of initial-state fluctuations, but that their quantitative description requires a better understanding of the initial fluctuation spectrum.

The QGP shear viscosity–elusive goal or just around the corner?

We compare ν2/ϵ2 and ν3/ϵ3 from single-shot and event-by-event (2+1)-dimensional hydrodynamic calculations and discuss the validity of using single-shot calculations as substitutes for event-by-event calculations. Further we present a proof-of-concept calculation demonstrating that ν2 and ν3 together can be used to strongly reduce initial condition ambiguities.

Shape and flow fluctuations in ultracentral Pb + Pb collisions at the energies available at the CERN Large Hadron Collider

We show that in hydrodynamic simulations for relativistic heavy-ion collisions, strong resonance decay calculations can be performed with fewer species of particle resonances while preserving good accuracy in single particle spectra and flow anisotropies. Such partial resonance calculations boost computation efficiency by a factor of 10 which is essential for large scale event-by-event simulations.