Rapidity Correlation Structure in Nuclear Collisions

Abstract

We show that measurements of the rapidity dependence of transverse momentum correlations can be used to determine the characteristic time ${\tau }_{\pi }$ that dictates the rate of isotropization of the stress energy tensor, as well as the shear viscosity $\nu =\eta /sT$. We formulate methods for computing these correlations using second order dissipative hydrodynamics with noise. Current data are consistent with ${\tau }_{\pi }/\nu \sim 10$, but targeted measurements can improve this precision.

Comments: 18 pages, 6 figures, version accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. C