International Journal of Physics | Vol. 4, No. 7, July 2013 | pp. 49–56
DOI: 10.46882/2013/IJP/000039
Research Article
Title: Hydrodynamic Evolution and Quark-Gluon Plasma Instabilities in High-Energy Heavy-Ion Collisions
Names of Authors: S. C. O’Brien¹, D. M. Richter²
Authors’ Affiliations: ¹School of Physics, University College Dublin, Dublin 4, Ireland; ²Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany
Abstract: High-energy heavy-ion collisions recreate the extreme conditions of the early universe, allowing for the study of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). This paper presents a detailed numerical model of the hydrodynamic evolution and filamentation instabilities within an anisotropic QGP expansion. We solved the relativistic Boltzmann transport equations coupled with self-consistent color fields using a three-dimensional parton-cascade simulation framework. The initial conditions were calibrated to simulate lead-lead (Pb-Pb) collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 2.76 TeV per nucleon pair. Our simulation tracks the rapid development of color-magnetic fields triggered by the Chromo-Weibel instability during the early non-equilibrium phase (t less than 1.0 fm/c). The calculations indicate that these generated fields reach a peak value of eB = 0.45 GeV² within a local volume. This acceleration drives isotropic momentum distributions faster than standard viscous hydrodynamics models predict. The inclusion of this turbulent field evolution reduces the calculated thermalization time scale by approximately 30.0%, reaching equilibrium at t = 0.6 fm/c. The resulting elliptic flow coefficient (v2) matches experimental data collected by the Large Hadron Collider across a wide range of impact parameters. This agreement clarifies the role of non-Abelian plasma instabilities in establishing early-stage hydrodynamic collective behavior.
Keywords: Quark-gluon plasma; relativistic hydrodynamics; Chromo-Weibel instability; heavy-ion collisions; parton cascade; thermalization
Manuscript Timeline: Received: March 20, 2013; Revised: May 05, 2013; Accepted: May 28, 2013; Published: July 15, 2013
Citation: O’Brien, S. C., & Richter, D. M. (2013). Hydrodynamic Evolution and Quark-Gluon Plasma Instabilities in High-Energy Heavy-Ion Collisions. International Journal of Physics, 4(7), 49–56.
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