Can dissipation prevent explosive decomposition in high-energy heavy ion collisions?

Abstract

We discuss the role of dissipation in the explosive spinodal decomposition scenario of hadron production during the chiral transition after a high-energy heavy ion collision. We use a Langevin description inspired by microscopic nonequilibrium field theory results to perform real-time lattice simulations of the behavior of the chiral fields. We show that the effect of dissipation can be dramatic. Analytic results for the short-time dynamics are also presented.

Comments: 9 latex pages, 4 eps figures, version to appear in Phys. Lett. B