Cylindrically symmetric diffusion model for relativistic heavy-ion collisions

Abstract

A relativistic diffusion model with cylindrical symmetry, which propagates an initial state based on quantum chromodynamics in time towards a thermal equilibrium limit, is derived from nonequilibrium-statistical considerations: Adapting an existing framework for Markovian stochastic processes representing relativistic phase-space trajectories, a Fokker-Planck equation is obtained for the time evolution of particle-number distribution functions with respect to transverse and longitudinal rapidity. The resulting partially-evolved distribution functions are transformed to transverse-momentum and pseudorapidity space, and compared with charged-hadron data from the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

Comments: 19 pages, 7 figures. Invited article for Annalen der Physik