Suppression of the shear viscosity in a 'semi'-quark-gluon plasma
- RIKEN BNL Research Center, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York 11973 (United States)
- Department of Physics, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York 11973 (United States)
We consider QCD at temperatures T near T{sub c}, where the theory deconfines. We distinguish between a 'complete' quark-gluon plasma (QGP), where the vacuum expectation value of the renormalized Polyakov loop is near unity, essentially constant with T, and the 'semi'-QGP, where the loop changes strongly with T. Lattice simulations indicate that in QCD, there is a semi-QGP from below T{sub c} to a few times that. Using a semiclassical model, we compute the shear viscosity, {eta}, to leading order in perturbation theory. We find that near T{sub c}, where the expectation value of the Polyakov loop is small, that {eta}/T{sup 3} is suppressed by two powers of the loop. For heavy ions, this suggests that during the initial stages of the collision, hydrodynamic behavior at the LHC will be characterized by a shear viscosity which is significantly larger than that at RHIC.
- OSTI ID:
- 21254241
- Journal Information:
- Physical Review. D, Particles Fields, Vol. 78, Issue 7; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.78.071501; (c) 2008 The American Physical Society; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0556-2821
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Influence of Shear Viscosity of Quark-Gluon Plasma on Elliptic Flow in Ultrarelativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions
Building a testable shear viscosity across the QCD phase diagram