Constraining the Eq. of State of Super-Hadronic Matter from Heavy-Ion Collisions

TL;DR

This paper uses Bayesian analysis of heavy-ion collision data from RHIC and LHC to constrain the QCD equation of state near the quark-hadron transition, aligning with lattice gauge theory results.

Contribution

It introduces a Bayesian framework that simultaneously analyzes multiple observables to infer the QCD equation of state with 14 model parameters.

Findings

Posterior distribution consistent with lattice QCD

Effective constraints on the equation of state near transition temperature

Advanced statistical techniques applied to heavy-ion collision data

Abstract

The equation of state of QCD matter for temperatures near and above the quark-hadron transition (165 MeV) is inferred within a Bayesian framework through the comparison of data from the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and from the Large Hadron Collider to theoretical models. State-of- the-art statistical techniques are applied to simultaneously analyze multiple classes of observables while varying 14 independent model parameters. The resulting posterior distribution over possible equations of state is consistent with results from lattice gauge theory.