Hydrodynamics of Ultra-Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions

Citation

Chu, Ming-chung (1987) Hydrodynamics of Ultra-Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions. Dissertation (Ph.D.), California Institute of Technology. doi:10.7907/kq9w-6f74. https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechTHESIS:08302019-142642675

Abstract

Relativistic hydrodynamic calculations are presented to describe the dynamics of ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions. In contrast to the "standard picture" of the field, our calculations do not assume scaling symmetry, and in fact we find large scaling violations near the fragmentation regions. In our 1+1-dimensional calculations, we find that while the hydrodynamic evolution is very sensitive to the formation and thermalization time and to the models of the source terms, the effects of changing the viscosity and the equation of state are small. Our 2+1-dimensional calculations show that transverse expansion is not important in the central rapidity region. We also present a brief review of the proposed signatures of the formation of quark-gluon plasma in high energy heavy-ion collisions, as examples of applications of hydrodynamics.

Thesis Files