119180749
Heavy-flavor in-medium momentum evolution: Langevin versus Boltzmann approach
The propagation of heavy quarks in the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) has been often treated within the framework of the Langevin equation (LV), i.e. assuming the momentum transfer is small or the scatterings are sufficiently forward peaked, small screening mass $m_D$. We address a direct comparison between the Langevin dynamics and the Boltzmann collisional integral (BM) when a bulk medium is in equilibrium at fixed temperature. We show that unless the cross section is quite forward peaked ($m_D\cong T $) or the mass to temperature ratio is quite large ($M_{HQ}/T \gtrsim 8-10$) there are significant differences in the evolution of the $p-$spectra and consequently on nuclear modification factor $R_{AA}(p_T)$. However for charm quark we find that very similar $R_{AA}(p_T)$ between the LV and BM can be obtained, but with a modified diffusion coefficient by about $\sim 15-50\%$ depending on the angular dependence of the cross section which regulates the momentum transfer. Studying also the momentum spread suffered by a single heavy quarks we see that at temperatures $T\gtrsim \, 250\,\rm MeV$ the dynamics of the scatterings is far from being of Brownian type for charm quarks. In the case of bottom quarks we essentially find no differences in the time evolution of the momentum spectra between the LV and the BM dynamics independently of the angular dependence of the cross section, at least in the range of temperature relevant for ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions. Finally, we have shown the possible impact of this study on $R_{AA}(p_T)$ and $v_2(p_T)$ for a realistic simulation of relativistic HIC. For larger $m_D$ the elliptic flow can be about $50\%$ larger for the Boltzmann dynamics with respect to the Langevin. This is helpful for a simultaneous reproduction of $R_{AA}(p_T)$ and $v_2(p_T)$.
118564693
Renormalized vs. nonrenormalized chiral transition in a magnetic background
A bstractWe study analytically the chiral phase transition for hot quark matter in presence of a strong magnetic background, focusing on the existence of a critical point at zero baryon chemical potential and nonzero magnetic field. We build up a Ginzburg-Landau effective potential for the chiral condensate at finite temperature, computing the coefficients of the expansion within a chiral quark-meson model. Our conclusion is that the existence of the critical point at finite B is very sensitive to the way the ultraviolet divergences of the model are treated. In particular, we find that after renormalization, no chiral critical point is present in the phase diagram. On the other hand, such a critical point there exists when the ultraviolet divergences are not removed by a proper renormalization of the thermodynamic potential.
23741379
Effects of symmetry energy on two-nucleon correlation functions in heavy-ion collisions induced by neutron-rich nuclei.
Using an isospin-dependent transport model, we study the effects of nuclear symmetry energy on two-nucleon correlation functions in heavy-ion collisions induced by neutron-rich nuclei. We find that the density dependence of the nuclear symmetry energy affects significantly the nucleon emission times in these collisions, leading to larger values of two-nucleon correlation functions for a symmetry energy that has a stronger density dependence. Two-nucleon correlation functions are thus useful tools for extracting information about the nuclear symmetry energy from heavy-ion collisions.
119235890
Shear viscosity and chemical equilibration of the QGP
We have investigated, in the frame work of the transport approach, different aspects of the QGP created in Heavy Ion Collisions at RHIC and LHC energies. The shear viscosityhas been calculated by using the Green-Kubo relation at the cascade level. We have compared the numerical results forobtained from the Green-Kubo correlator with the analytical formula in both the Relaxation Time Approximation (RTA) and the Chapman-Enskog approximation (CE). From this comparison we show that in the range of temperature explored in a Heavy Ion collision the RTA underestimates the viscosity by about a factor of 2, while a good agreement is found between the CE approximation and Gree-Kubo relation already at first order of approximation. The agreement with the CE approximation supplies an analytical formula that allows to develop kinetic transport theory at fixed shear viscosity to entropy density ratio, ´/s. We show some results for the build up of anisotropic flows v2 in a transport approach at fixed shear viscosity to entropy density ratio, ´/s. We study the impact of a T-dependent ´/s(T ) on the generation of the elliptic flows at both RHIC and LHC. We show that the transport approach provides, in a unified way, a tool able to naturally describe the v2(pT ) in a wide range of pT , including also the description of the rise and fall and saturation of the v2(pT ) observed at LHC. Finally, we have studied the evolution of the quark-gluon composition employing a Boltzmann-Vlasov transport approach that include: the mean fields dynamics, associated to the quasi-particle model, and the elastic and inelastic collisions for massive quarks and gluons. Following the chemical evolution from an initial gluon dominated plasma we predict a quark dominance close to TC paving the way to an hadronization via quark coalescence.
119459213
Pentaquark baryon production at the relativistic heavy ion collider
Abstract Production of pentaquark Θ + baryons in central relativistic heavy ion collisions is studied in a kinetic model. Assuming that a quark–gluon plasma is produced in the collisions, we first determine the number of Θ + produced from the quark–gluon plasma using a parton coalescence model, and then take into consideration its production and absorption in subsequent hadronic matter via the reactions K N ↔ Θ , K N ↔ π Θ and π N ↔ K ¯ Θ . We find that although the final Θ + number is affected by hadronic interactions, it remains sensitive to the initial number of Θ + produced from the quark–gluon plasma, particularly in the case of a small Θ + width as imposed by the K + N and K + d scattering data. Because of small baryon chemical potential in the hot dense matter produced in these collisions, the number of produced anti- Θ is only slightly smaller than that of Θ + .
119263837
Heavy Flavor Suppression: Boltzmann vs Langevin
The propagation of heavy flavor through the quark gluon plasma has been treated commonly within the framework of Langevin dynamics, i.e. assuming the heavy flavor momentum transfer is much smaller than the light one. On the other hand a similar suppression factor RAA has been observed experimentally for light and heavy flavors. We present a thorough study of the approximations involved by Langevin equation by mean of a direct comparison with the full collisional integral within the framework of Boltzmann transport equation. We have compared the results obtained in both approaches which can differ substantially for charm quark leading to quite different values extracted for the heavy quark diffusion coefficient. In the case of bottom quark the approximation appears to be quite reasonable.
125690152
The TOTEM experiment at LHC
The TOTEM experiment is dedicated to the measurement of the total proton-proton cross-section with the luminosity-independent method and the study of elastic and diffractive scattering processes. Two tracking telescopes, T1 and T2, integrated in the CMS detector, cover the pseudo-rapidity region between 3.1 and 6.5 on both sides of the interaction point IP5. The Roman Pot (RP) stations are located at distances of ± 147m and ± 220 m with respect to the interaction point to measure the very forward scattered protons at very small angles. During the LHC technical stop in winter 2010/2011, the TOTEM experiment was completed with the installation of the T1 telescope and the RP stations at ± 147 m. In 2011, the LHC machine provided special optics with the large s* = 90 m, allowing TOTEM to measure the elastic scattering differential cross section, down to the four-momentum transfer squared |t| = 2×10−2 GeV2. Using the optical theorem and extrapolation of the differential cross section to t = 0 (optical point), the total p-p cross section at the LHC energy of √v = 7 TeV could be computed for the first time. The status of the experiment, the performance of the detectors with emphasis on the RPs are described and the first physics results are presented.
123310156
Status of the TOTEM experiment at LHC
The TOTEM experiment is dedicated to the measurement of the total proton–proton cross-section with the luminosity-independent method and the study of elastic and diffractive scattering processes. Two tracking telescopes, T1 and T2, integrated in the CMS detector, cover the pseudo-rapidity region between 3.1 and 6.5 on both sides of the interaction point IP5. The Roman Pot (RP) stations are located at distances of ±147 m and ±220 m with respect to the interaction point to measure the very forward scattered protons at very small angles. During the LHC technical stop in winter 2010/2011, the TOTEM experiment was completed with the installation of the T1 telescope and the RP stations at ±147 m. In 2011, the LHC machine provided special optics with the large s⁎=90 m, allowing TOTEM to measure the elastic scattering differential cross-section, down to the four-momentum transfer squared |t|=2×10−2 GeV2. Using the optical theorem and extrapolation of the differential cross-section to t  =0 (optical point), the total p–p cross-section at the LHC energy of s=7TeV could be computed for the first time. Furthermore we measured with standard LHC beam optics and the energy of s=7TeV the forward charged particle pseudorapidity density dn/dη in the range of 5.3<|η|<6.4. The status of the experiment, the performance of the detectors with emphasis on the RPs are described and the first physics results are presented.
67834315
Luminosity-independent measurements of total, elastic and inelastic cross-sections at $\sqrt{s}$ = 7 TeV
The TOTEM experiment at the LHC has performed the first luminosity-independent determination of the total proton-proton cross-section at . This technique is based on the optical theorem and requires simultaneous measurements of the inelastic rate – accomplished with the forward charged-particle telescopes T1 and T2 in the range 3.1 < |η| < 6.5 – and of the elastic rate by detecting the outcoming protons with Roman Pot detectors. The data presented here were collected in a dedicated run in 2011 with special beam optics (β* = 90 m) and Roman Pots approaching the beam close enough to register elastic events with squared four-momentum transfers |t| as low as 5·10−3 GeV2. The luminosity-independent results for the elastic, inelastic and total cross-sections are σel = (25.1 ± 1.1) mb, σinel = (72.9 ± 1.5) mb and σtot = (98.0 ± 2.5) mb, respectively. At the same time this method yields the integrated luminosity, in agreement with measurements by CMS. TOTEM has also determined the total cross-section in two complementary ways, both using the CMS luminosity measurement as an input. The first method sums the elastic and inelastic cross-sections and thus does not depend on the ρ parameter. The second applies the optical theorem to the elastic-scattering measurements only and therefore is free of the T1 and T2 measurement uncertainties. The methods, having very different systematic dependences, give results in excellent agreement. Moreover, the ρ-independent measurement makes a first estimate for the ρ parameter at possible: |ρ| = 0.145 ± 0.091.
121659740
The CDF level 2 calorimetric trigger upgrade
Abstract CDF II upgraded the calorimeter trigger to cope with the higher detector occupancy due to the increased Tevatron instantaneous luminosity ( ∼ 2.8 × 10 32 cm - 2 s - 1 ) . While the original system was implemented in custom hardware and provided to the L2 trigger a limited-quality jet clustering performed using a reduced resolution measurement of the transverse energy in the calorimeter trigger towers, the upgraded system provides offline-quality jet reconstruction of the full resolution calorimeter data. This allows to keep better under control the dependence of the trigger rates on the instantaneous luminosity and to improve the efficiency and purity of the trigger selections. The upgraded calorimeter trigger uses the general purpose VME board Pulsar, developed at CDF II and already widely used to upgrade the L2 tracking and L2 decision systems. A battery of Pulsars is used to merge and send the calorimeter data to the L2 CPUs, where software-implemented algorithms perform offline-like clustering. In this paper we review the design and the performance of the upgraded system.
118420745
Elastic Scattering and Total Cross-Section in p+p reactions measured by the LHC Experiment TOTEM at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV
Proton-proton elastic scattering has been measured by the TOTEM experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider at $\sqrt{s} = 7 $ TeV in special runs with the Roman Pot detectors placed as close to the outgoing beam as seven times the transverse beam size. The differential cross-section measurements are reported in the |t|-range of 0.36 to 2.5 GeV^2. Extending the range of data to low t values from 0.02 to 0.33 GeV^2,and utilizing the luminosity measurements of CMS, the total proton-proton cross section at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV is measured to be (98.3 +- 0.2(stat) +- 2.8(syst)) mb.