Quasiparticle Theory of Transport Coefficients for Hadronic Matter at Finite Temperature and Baryon Density

TL;DR

This paper develops a quasiparticle model to calculate transport coefficients like viscosity and thermal conductivity of hot hadronic matter at finite temperature and baryon density, relevant for heavy-ion collision experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a thermodynamically consistent quasiparticle framework with mean fields to derive formulas for transport coefficients at finite baryon density.

Findings

Derived formulas for shear and bulk viscosities and thermal conductivity.

Implemented Landau-Lifshitz conditions for thermodynamic consistency.

Applicable to hadronic matter in heavy-ion collision environments.

Abstract

We develop a flexible quasiparticle theory of transport coefficients of hot hadronic matter at finite baryon density. We begin with a hadronic quasiparticle model which includes a scalar and a vector mean field. Quasiparticle energies and the mean fields depend on temperature and baryon chemical potential. Starting with the quasiparticle dispersion relation, we derive the Boltzmann equation and use the Chapman-Enskog expansion to derive formulas for the shear and bulk viscosities and thermal conductivity. We obtain both relaxation time approximation formulas and more general integral equations. Throughout the work, we explicitly enforce the Landau-Lifshitz conditions of fit and ensure the theory is thermodynamically self-consistent. The derived formulas should be useful for predicting the transport coefficients of the hadronic phase of matter produced in heavy-ion collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and at other accelerators.