Soft-gluon exchange matters: isotropic screening in QCD kinetic theory

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Hauptverfasser: Boguslavski, Kirill, Lindenbauer, Florian
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Boguslavski, Kirill
Lindenbauer, Florian
author_facet Boguslavski, Kirill
Lindenbauer, Florian
contents QCD kinetic theory simulations are a prominent tool for studying the nonequilibrium initial stages in heavy-ion collisions. Despite their success, all implementations rely on approximations of the hard thermal loop (HTL) screened matrix elements in the collision terms. In this paper, we present our results for different isotropic screening prescriptions in the elastic collision term for gluons. In particular, we go beyond the simple Debye-like screening form that is used in all current implementations and apply the isotropic HTL matrix element instead. For isotropic systems, the evolution is nearly unchanged, but when studying the equilibration process in a Bjorken expanding plasma, we find qualitative and quantitative differences in a range of moments of the distribution function, such as a decrease in the maximum pressure anisotropy by up to 50%. In contrast, we find no significant qualitative impact on the jet quenching parameter or on the late-time hydrodynamization dynamics of anisotropic plasmas but observe systematically smaller values of $η/s$ by about 10% that coincide with perturbative calculations at small couplings. Our study reveals that the choice of the screening prescription can lead to large corrections at early times, but is less important close to equilibrium.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_09605
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Soft-gluon exchange matters: isotropic screening in QCD kinetic theory
Boguslavski, Kirill
Lindenbauer, Florian
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
Nuclear Theory
QCD kinetic theory simulations are a prominent tool for studying the nonequilibrium initial stages in heavy-ion collisions. Despite their success, all implementations rely on approximations of the hard thermal loop (HTL) screened matrix elements in the collision terms. In this paper, we present our results for different isotropic screening prescriptions in the elastic collision term for gluons. In particular, we go beyond the simple Debye-like screening form that is used in all current implementations and apply the isotropic HTL matrix element instead. For isotropic systems, the evolution is nearly unchanged, but when studying the equilibration process in a Bjorken expanding plasma, we find qualitative and quantitative differences in a range of moments of the distribution function, such as a decrease in the maximum pressure anisotropy by up to 50%. In contrast, we find no significant qualitative impact on the jet quenching parameter or on the late-time hydrodynamization dynamics of anisotropic plasmas but observe systematically smaller values of $η/s$ by about 10% that coincide with perturbative calculations at small couplings. Our study reveals that the choice of the screening prescription can lead to large corrections at early times, but is less important close to equilibrium.
title Soft-gluon exchange matters: isotropic screening in QCD kinetic theory
topic High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
Nuclear Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.09605