Relativistic Hydrodynamic Attractors with Broken Symmetries: Non-Conformal and Non-Homogeneous

Abstract

Standard textbooks will state that hydrodynamics requires near-equilibrium to be applicable. Recently, however, out-of-equilibrium attractor solutions for hydrodynamics have been found in kinetic theory and holography in systems with a high degree of symmetry, suggesting the possibility of a genuine out-of-equilibrium formulation of hydrodynamics. This work demonstrates that attractor solutions also occur in non-conformal kinetic theory and spatially non-homogeneous systems, potentially having important implications for the interpretation of experimental data in heavy-ion and proton-proton collisions and relativistic fluid dynamics as a whole.

Comments: 13 pages, 2 figures; v2: minor changes (typos, etc.); v3: matches published version