Dilepton production from the quark-gluon plasma using (3+1)-dimensional anisotropic dissipative hydrodynamics

TL;DR

This paper models dilepton production from the quark-gluon plasma using advanced (3+1)-dimensional anisotropic hydrodynamics, revealing high sensitivity to initial momentum-space anisotropy and potential for experimental constraints.

Contribution

It introduces a self-consistent method to compute dilepton yields incorporating full spatiotemporal evolution and momentum-space anisotropy of the quark-gluon plasma.

Findings

High-energy dilepton yields are highly sensitive to initial anisotropy.

Predictions for dilepton spectra as functions of invariant mass, transverse momentum, and rapidity.

Potential to constrain early-time quark-gluon plasma properties experimentally.

Abstract

We compute dilepton production from the deconfined phase of the quark-gluon plasma using leading-order (3+1)-dimensional anisotropic hydrodynamics. The anisotropic hydrodynamics equa- tions employed describe the full spatiotemporal evolution of the transverse temperature, spheroidal momentum-space anisotropy parameter, and the associated three-dimensional collective flow of the matter. The momentum-space anisotropy is also taken into account in the computation of the dilepton production rate, allowing for a self-consistent description of dilepton production from the quark-gluon plasma. For our final results, we present predictions for high-energy dilepton yields as a function of invariant mass, transverse momentum, and pair rapidity. We demonstrate that high- energy dilepton production is extremely sensitive to the assumed level of initial momentum-space anisotropy of the quark-gluon plasma. As a result, it may be possible to experimentally constrain the early-time momentum-space anisotropy of the quark-gluon plasma generated in relativistic heavy ion collisions using high-energy dilepton yields.