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At least 433 records · Page 24

Thermal-model-based characterization of heavy-ion-collision systems at chemical freeze-out

We investigate the chemical freeze-out in heavy-ion collisions (HICs) and the impact of the hadronic spectrum on thermal model analyses [1, 2]. Detailed knowledge of the hadronic spectrum is still an open question, which has phenomenological consequences on the study of HICs. By varying the number of resonances included in Hadron Resonance Gas (HRG) Model calculations, we can shed light on which particles may be produced. Furthermore, we study the influence of the number of states on the so-called two flavor freezeout scenario, in which strange and light particles can freeze-out separately. We consider results for the chemical freeze-out parameters obtained from thermal model fits and from calculating net-particle fluctuations. We will show the effect of using one global temperature to fit all particles and alternatively, allowing particles with and without strange quarks to freeze-out separately.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Electric dipole moments in 5+3 flavor weak effective theory

A fully generic treatment of electric dipole moments (EDMs) is presented in the CP-violating and flavor-conserving weak effective field theory (WET) with five flavors of quarks and three flavors of leptons. We systematically analyze leading contributions to EDMs originating from QCD and QED renormalization group running between the electroweak scale and low energy scales of about 2 GeV. We include the full one-loop anomalous dimension and a subset of two-loop corrections, as well as threshold corrections at the bottom, charm and τ masses. This allows us to derive master formulae in the space of generic WET for the neutron and proton EDMs, for EDMs of diamagnetic atoms, and for the precession frequencies constrained in molecular EDM experiments, from which bounds on the electron EDM are extracted. In particular, our master formulae capture the contributions of WET CP-violating operators with heavy quark and lepton flavors. As an application, we study EDM constraints on the Yukawa couplings of the Higgs boson, in both the linear and non-linear realizations of electroweak symmetry breaking.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Polarization and Vorticity in the Quark–Gluon Plasma

The quark–gluon plasma (QGP) produced by collisions between ultrarelativistic heavy nuclei is well described in the language of hydrodynamics. Noncentral collisions are characterized by very large angular momentum, which in a fluid system manifests as flow vorticity. This rotational structure can lead to a spin polarization of the hadrons that eventually emerge from the plasma, and thus these collisions provide experimental access to flow substructure at unprecedented detail. Recently, the first observations of Λ hyperon polarization along the direction of collisional angular momentum were reported. These measurements are in broad agreement with hydrodynamic and transport-based calculations and reveal that the QGP is the most vortical fluid ever observed. However, there remain important tensions between theory and observation that might be fundamental in nature. In the relatively mature field of heavy-ion physics, the discovery of global hyperon polarization and 3D simulations of the collision have opened an entirely new direction of research. We discuss the current status of this rapidly developing area and directions for future research.

heavy-ion collisions↗

Form factors for semi-leptonic $B_{(s)} \to D_{(s)}^∗\ell \nu_\ell$ decays

Semileptonic $B_{(s)}$ decays are of great phenomenological interestbecause they allow to extract CKM matrix elements or test lepton flavouruniversality. Taking advantage of existing data, we explore extractingform factors for vector final states using the narrow widthapproximation. Based on RBC/UKQCD's set of 2+1 flavour gauge fieldensembles with Shamir domain-wall fermion and Iwasaki gauge fieldaction, we study semileptonic $B_{(s)}$ decays using domain-wallfermions for light, strange and charm quarks, whereas bottom quarks aresimulated with the relativistic heavy quark (RHQ) action. Exploratoryresults for $B_s \to D_s^* \ell \nu_\ell$ are presented.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Effective Field Theory for jet substructure in heavy ion collisions

I develop an Effective Field Theory (EFT) framework to compute jet substructure observables for heavy ion collision experiments. As an example, I consider dijet events that accompany the formation of a weakly coupled long lived Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP) medium in a heavy ion collision and look at an observable insensitive to jet selection bias: the simultaneous measurement of jet mass along with the transverse momentum imbalance between the jets that are groomed to remove soft radiation. Treating the jet as an open quantum system, I write down a factorization formula within the SCET (Soft Collinear Effective Theory) framework in the forward scattering regime. The physics of the medium is encoded in a universal soft field correlator while the jet-medium interaction is captured by a medium induced jet function. The factorization formula leads to a Lindblad type equation for the evolution of the reduced density matrix of the jet in the Markovian approximation. The solution for this equation allows a resummation of large logarithms that arise due to the final state measurements imposed while simultaneously summing over multiple incoherent interactions of the jet with the medium.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Quarkonium transport in weakly and strongly coupled plasmas

We report on progress in the nonperturbative understanding of quarkonium dynamics inside a thermal plasma. The time evolution of small-size quarkonium is governed by two-point correlation functions of chromoelectric fields dressed with an adjoint Wilson line, known in this context as generalized gluon distributions (GGDs). The GGDs have been calculated in both weakly and strongly coupled plasmas by using perturbative and holographic methods. Strikingly, the results of our calculations for a strongly coupled plasma indicate that the quarkonium dissociation and recombination rates vanish in the transport descriptions that assume quarkonium undergoes Markovian dynamics. However, this does not imply that the dynamics is trivial. As a starting point to explore the phenomenological consequences of the result at strong coupling, we show a calculation of the Y(1 S ) formation probability in time-dependent perturbation theory. This is a first step towards the development of a transport formalism that includes non-Markovian effects, which, depending on how close the as of yet undetermined nonperturbative QCD result of the GGDs is to the strongly coupled N = 4 SYM result, could very well dominate over the Markovian ones in quark-gluon plasma produced at RHIC and the LHC.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Vanderbilt CMS Heavy-Ion Tier-2 Facility (Final Report)

The CMS experiment at the LHC at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland spends a portion of its running time colliding heavy ions. These heavy ion collisions are a key probe of a state of matter known as a Quark Gluon Plasma, which is a state of matter found in the very early universe 10s of microseconds after the big bang. These collision data are recorded by the CMS experiment and then undergo several stages of refinement to extract physics properties of the collisions from the raw data recorded by the various detector subsystems in CMS. In addition, copies of these datasets are stored on tape archival storage for data preservation. This award funds the deployment, maintenance, and operation of a computing facility at Vanderbilt University which processes, stores, and analyzes these collision data.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Search for resonance in inclusive and b-tagged dijet mass spectra in proton-proton collision at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV and constraints on dark matter and other models

Two analyses searching for new heavy resonances and interpreting the result with dark matter are presented in this dissertation. The first analysis searches for resonances decaying into dijet final states using the proton-proton collision data at center mass of $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV with the CMS detector at Large Hadron Collider in2016, corresponding to a total integrated luminosity of 36 fb -1 . No significant evidence for the production of new particles is observed. A simplified model of interactions between quarks and dark matter is used to interpret the result. The second analysis searches for resonances decaying into dijet final states using the proton-proton collision data at center mass of $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV with the CMS detector at Large Hadron Collider in 2016, 2017, and 2018, corresponding to a total integrated luminosity of 137.5 fb -1 . A b-tagger named DeepJet is used to examine the events with jets containing B hadrons. No evidence of new heavy resonances is observed, as well. The 95% confidence level cross-section upper limit is set on excited b-quark b* and Coloron models. Limits are also set on a simplified model of interactions between b-quarks and dark matter.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Quarkonium Polarization Kinetic Equation from Open Quantum Systems and Effective Field Theories

Recent measurements of polarization phenomena in relativistic heavy ion collisions have aroused a great interest in understanding dynamical spin evolution of the QCD matter. In particular, the spin alignment signature of J/ψ has been recently observed in Pb-Pb collisions at LHC, which may infer nontrivial spin transport of quarkonia in quark gluon plasmas. Motivated by this, we study the spin-dependent in-medium dynamics of quarkonia by using the potential nonrelativistic QCD (pNRQCD) and the open quantum system framework. By applying the Markovian approximation and Wigner transformation, we systematically derive the Boltzmann transport equation for vector quarkonia with polarization dependence in the quantum optical limit. As opposed to the previous study for the spin-independent case where the collision terms depend on chromoelectric correlators, the new kinetic equation incorporates gauge invariant correlators of chromomagnetic fields that determine the recombination and dissociation terms with polarization dependence at the order we are working in the multipole expansion. In the quantum Brownian motion limit, the Lindblad equation with new transport coefficients defined in terms of the chromomagnetic field correlators have also been derived. Our formalism is generic and valid for both weakly-coupled and strongly-coupled quark gluon plasmas. It may be further applied to study spin alignment of vector quarkonia in heavy ion collisions.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Equation of State and Energy Loss of Hot and Dense Quark-Gluon matter from Holographic Black Holes

By using gravity/gauge correspondence, we construct a holographic model, constrained to mimic the lattice QCD equation of state at zero density, to investigate the temperature and baryon chemical potential dependence of the equation of state. We also obtained the energy loss of light and heavy partons within the hot and dense plasma represented by the heavy quark drag force, Langevin diffusion coefficients and jet quenching parameter at the critical point and across the first-order transition line predicted by the model.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

PHENIX Probing QCD Matter Through Heavy Flavor and Quarkonium at RHIC

Recent results from the PHENIX experiment on heavy flavors and quarkonia production in p + Al, p + Au, d + Au, and Au + Au collision systems at psNN = 200 GeV are summarized. The results are carried out by the measurements of the nuclear modification factors and elliptic flow. The nuclear modification factors measurements give insight into the energy loss of heavy quarks in the quark-gluon plasma medium along their path lengths. The elliptic flow measurements are a good tool to investigate the coupling of heavy quarks with the medium. The measurements are presented as a function of centrality, rapidity, and transverse momentum. The interpretations of the results in light of our current theoretical models, and comparison to LHCb and ALICE measurements are presented.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Hot QCD White Paper

Hot QCD physics studies the nuclear strong force under extreme temperature and densities. Experimentally these conditions are achieved via high-energy collisions of heavy ions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In the past decade, a unique and substantial suite of data was collected at RHIC and the LHC, probing hydrodynamics at the nucleon scale, the temperature dependence of the transport properties of quark-gluon plasma, the phase diagram of nuclear matter, the interaction of quarks and gluons at different scales and much more. This document, as part of the 2023 nuclear science long range planning process, was written to review the progress in hot QCD since the 2015 Long Range Plan for Nuclear Science, as well as highlight the realization of previous recommendations, and present opportunities for the next decade, building on the accomplishments and investments made in theoretical developments and the construction of new detectors. Furthermore, this document provides additional context to support the recommendations voted on at the Joint Hot and Cold QCD Town Hall Meeting, which are reported in a separate document.

FOS: Physical sciences↗

Pushing the Boundaries of Relativistic Fluid Dynamics: From Particle Colliders to Neutron Star Mergers

This project aimed at establishing connections between fluid dynamics, kinetic theory, and string theory to develop new tools to characterize the far-from-equilibrium properties of relativistic systems, which are instrumental in understanding the emergence of liquid-like behavior of the quark-gluon plasma formed in heavy-ion collisions. This project investigated the fundamental properties of viscous fluids in the full nonlinear regime to pave the way for the systematic inclusion of viscous effects in future numerical simulations of neutron star mergers.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Spin Hydrodynamic Generation in the Charged Subatomic Swirl

Recently there have been signifcant interests in the spin hydrodynamic generation phenomenon from multiple disciplines of physics. Such phenomenon arises from global polarization efect of microscopic spin by macroscopic fuid rotation and is expected to occur in the hot quark-gluon fuid (the “subatomic swirl”) created in relativistic nuclear collisions. This was indeed discovered in experiments which however revealed an intriguing puzzle: a polarization diference between particles and anti-particles. We suggest a novel application of a general connection between rotation and magnetic feld: a magnetic feld naturally arises along the fuid vorticity in the charged subatomic swirl. We establish this mechanism as a new way for generating long-lived in-medium magnetic feld in heavy ion collisions. Due to its novel feature, this new magnetic feld provides a nontrivial explanation to the puzzling observation of a diference in spin hydrodynamic generation for particles and anti-particles in heavy ion collisions.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Variant Nelson-Barr mechanism with minimal flavor violation

Within the general framework of using spontaneous CP violation to solve the strong CP problem, we construct a variant Nelson-Barr model in which the Standard Model (SM) quark contribution to the strong CP phase is cancelled by new heavy QCD-charged fermions. This cancellation is ensured by choosing conjugate representations for the new colored states under the same global flavor symmetry of SM quarks. Choosing the global flavor symmetry to be that of minimal flavor violation, we suppress higher-order corrections to the strong CP phase to well below current experimental constraints. More than two dozen massless Goldstone bosons emerge from spontaneous flavor symmetry breaking, which yield strong astrophysical constraints on the symmetry breaking scale. In the early universe, the Goldstone bosons can be thermally produced from their interactions with the heavy colored fermions and contribute to ΔN eff at a measurable level. As a function of reheating temperature, the predicted ΔN eff shows an interesting plateau behavior we dub the “flavor stairway”, which encodes information about the SM quark flavor structure.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Elliptic flow coalescence to identify the $f_0$(980) content

Here we use a simple coalescence model to generate $f_0$(980) particles for three configurations: a $s\bar{s}$ meson, a $u\bar{u}s\bar{s}$ tetraquark, and a $K^+K^–$ molecule. The phase-space information of the coalescing constituents is taken from a multiphase transport (AMPT) simulation of heavy-ion collisions. It is shown that the number of constituent quarks scaling of the elliptic flow anisotropy can be used to discern $s\bar{s}$ from $u\bar{u}s\bar{s}$ and $K^+K^–$ configurations.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗