An estimate of the bulk viscosity of the hadronic medium

Abstract

The bulk viscosity ($\zeta$) of the hadronic medium has been estimated within the ambit of the Hadron Resonance Gas (HRG) model including the Hagedorn density of states. The HRG thermodynamics within a grand canonical ensemble provides the mean hadron number as well as its fluctuation. The fluctuation in the chemical composition of the hadronic medium in the grand canonical ensemble can result in non-zero divergence of the hadronic fluid flow velocity, allowing us to estimate the $\zeta$ of the hadronic matter upto a relaxation time. We study the influence of the hadronic spectrum on $\zeta$ and find its correlation with the conformal symmetry breaking (CSB) measure, $ϵ-3P$. We estimate $\zeta$ along the contours with constant, $S/N_B$ (total entropy/net baryon number) in the $T-\mu$ plane (temperature-baryonic chemical potential) for $S/N_B=30,45$ and 300. We also assess the value of $\zeta$ on the chemical freezeout curve for various centre of mass energy ($\sqrt{s_{NN}}$) and find that the bulk viscosity to entropy density ratio, $\zeta /s$ is larger at FAIR than LHC energies.

Comments: Two more figures added. One LaTex for the text and 9 eps files for the figures