Toward initial conditions of conserved charges

At top collider energies where baryon stopping is negligible, the initial state of heavy ion collisions is overall charge neutral and predominantly composed of gluons. Nevertheless, there can also be significant local fluctuations of the baryon number, strangeness, and electric charge densities about zero, perturbatively corresponding to the production of quark/antiquark pairs. These previously ignored local charge fluctuations can permit the study of charge diffusion in the quark-gluon plasma (QGP), even at top collider energies. In this paper we present a new model denoted ICCING (Initial Conserved Charges in Nuclear Geometry) which can reconstruct the initial conditions of conserved charges in the QGP by sampling a (g → quark/anti-quark) splitting probability over the initial energy density. We find that the new charge distributions generally differ from the bulk energy density; in particular, the strangeness distribution is significantly more eccentric than standard bulk observables and appears to be associated with the geometry of hot spots in the initial state. The new information provided by these conserved charges opens the door to studying a wealth of new charge- and flavor-dependent correlations in the initial state and ultimately the charge transport parameters of the QGP.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Physics

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2023

Author dc:creator

• Carzon, Patrick

Contributors dc:contributor

• Noronha-Hostler, Jacquelyn
• Noronha, Jorge
• Sickles, Anne
• Gammie, Charles

• Nuclear Physics
• Initial State
• Heavy-ion Collisions
• Conserved Charges
• Ultra-central Puzzle

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2023 Patrick Carzon

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/121968

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F121968