Bulk viscosity, chemical equilibration and flow at RHIC

We study the effects of bulk viscosity on pT spectra and elliptic flow in heavy ion collisions at RHIC. We argue that direct effect of the bulk viscosity on the evolution of the velocity field is small, but corrections to the freezeout distributions can be significant. These effects are dominated by...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inNuclear physics. A Vol. 904-905; pp. 393c - 396c
Main Authors Schäfer, Thomas, Dusling, Kevin
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Elsevier B.V 02.05.2013
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Summary:We study the effects of bulk viscosity on pT spectra and elliptic flow in heavy ion collisions at RHIC. We argue that direct effect of the bulk viscosity on the evolution of the velocity field is small, but corrections to the freezeout distributions can be significant. These effects are dominated by chemical non-equilibration in the hadronic phase. We show that a non-zero bulk viscosity in the range ζ/s≲0.05 improves the description of spectra and flow at RHIC.
ISSN:0375-9474
DOI:10.1016/j.nuclphysa.2013.02.032