Speaker
Description
Shock waves are sharp, non-linear discontinuities in pressure, density, and temperature that form when a disturbance propagates supersonically relative to the medium. They arise both in relativistic heavy-ion collisions and in high-energy astrophysical environments such as core-collapse supernovae and binary neutron star mergers. Despite the enormous separation in spatial and temporal scales, these systems are governed by the same relativistic conservation laws and admit a unified description within relativistic fluid dynamics.
In heavy-ion collisions, shock-like phenomena emerge during early compression and jet–medium interactions in the strongly coupled quark–gluon plasma, while in astrophysics shocks are typically sustained structures shaped by gravity, radiation, and magnetic fields. Differences in the equation of state, transport properties, and boundary conditions determine the specific realisation of shocks, while the underlying dynamics remain universal.
This contribution uses shock waves as a comparative probe within a unified relativistic fluid-dynamical framework to study emergent behaviour in relativistic matter across laboratory and astrophysical scales.
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