12-18 August 2012
US/Eastern timezone
Home > Timetable > Session details > Contribution details
PDF | XML | iCal

The spectrum of quantum fluctuations and space-time evolution in the little bang

Presented by Raju VENUGOPALAN on 15 Aug 2012 from 12:00 to 12:20
Type: Oral Presentation
Track: Pre-equilibrium and initial state dynamics

Content

We outline significant recent progress in a program to include quantum corrections to the evolution of the classical color fields produced in high-energy ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions. Previous work in this direction for a scalar \phi^4 theory [1] has now been extended to QCD. Leading contributions from unstable quantum modes can be resumed to all loop orders and expressed in terms of a gauge invariant spectrum of initial quantum fluctuations, which has been computed recently [2]. These fluctuations play a key role in decoherence of the high occupancy fields, and in their possible isotropization and flow, and in the matching of this initial dynamics to hydrodynamic flow, thereby potentially eliminating a big source of uncertainty in hydrodynamic simulations. We report on progress in the 3+1-D numerical computations implementing these pre-equilibrium dynamics. [1] K.~Dusling, T.~Epelbaum, F.~Gelis and R.~Venugopalan, %``Role of quantum fluctuations in a system with strong fields: Onset of hydrodynamical flow,'' Nucl.\ Phys.\ A {\bf 850}, 69 (2011); T.~ Epelbaum and F. Gelis, %``Role of quantum fluctuations in a system with strong fields: Spectral properties and Thermalization,'' Nucl.\ Phys.\ A {\bf 872}, 210 (2011). [2] K.~Dusling, F.~Gelis and R.~Venugopalan, %``The initial spectrum of fluctuations in the little bang,'' Nucl.\ Phys.\ A {\bf 872}, 161 (2011).

Place

Room: Empire

Primary authors

More

Co-authors

More