The Runny Gauge Plasma: shear viscosity to entropy for quarks and gluons

Jackson, Greg

The Runny Gauge Plasma: shear viscosity to entropy for quarks and gluons

Master Thesis

2016

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

Department of Physics

Faculty

Faculty of Science

Abstract

Heavy ion experiments at the LHC and RHIC have supported the existence of a quark-gluon plasma (QGP), which is strongly coupled and behaves as an almost ideal fluid. We shall discuss both bulk thermodynamic and off-equilibrium transport properties of the QGP, within the theory of quantum chromodynamics (QCD). Meaningful approximations of most observables require quantum fluctuations to be taken into account. These arise in perturbation theory as loop corrections to tree level amplitudes, and describe both the scale-dependence of the coupling and charge screening in a many- body system. We emphasise that because the effective interaction strength, for a QGP, may vary considerably at the relevant scales, the running of the coupling cannot be ignored. The goal of this thesis is to understand better a specific, long-standing question in the field of heavy ion physics: why the QGP has a remarkably small shear viscosity to entropy density ratio η/s ~< 0:5, near the confinement temperature. Our main argument hinges on combining both the thermal and vacuum fluctuations in resummation-improved perturbation theory. In this respect, we thoroughly analyse the range of applicability for perturbative approximations in which the coupling may be 'moderately' large.η

Keywords

Physics

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