The Initial Flow of Classical Gluon Fields in Heavy Ion Collisions

TL;DR

This paper analytically calculates the initial energy flow of classical gluon fields in high-energy heavy ion collisions, revealing radial, elliptic, and rapidity-odd flows linked to initial energy density gradients and angular momentum.

Contribution

It introduces an analytic solution to Yang-Mills equations for initial gluon field flow, highlighting new flow patterns and their physical origins in non-abelian gauge laws.

Findings

Radial and elliptic flow follow initial energy density gradients.

Presence of rapidity-odd transverse flow implies angular momentum effects.

Flow patterns are derived from non-abelian generalizations of classical electromagnetic laws.

Abstract

Using analytic solutions of the Yang-Mills equations we calculate the initial flow of energy of the classical gluon field created in collisions of large nuclei at high energies. We find radial and elliptic flow which follows gradients in the initial energy density, similar to a simple hydrodynamic behavior. In addition we find a rapidity-odd transverse flow field which implies the presence of angular momentum and should lead to directed flow in final particle spectra. We trace those energy flow terms to transverse fields from the non-abelian generalization of Gauss' Law and Ampere's and Faraday's Laws.