Simulating collisions of thick nuclei in the color glass condensate framework

TL;DR

This paper simulates early-stage heavy-ion collisions with finite nuclear thickness in 3+1 dimensions, exploring how thickness affects glasma formation within the color glass condensate framework, including non-boost-invariant effects.

Contribution

It introduces a simulation approach for thick nuclei in the laboratory frame using the colored particle-in-cell method, extending beyond boost-invariant models.

Findings

Agreement with boost-invariant results in the limiting case

Impact of nuclear thickness on glasma production

Analysis of pressure anisotropy in non-boost-invariant collisions

Abstract

We present our work on the simulation of the early stages of heavy-ion collisions with finite longitudinal thickness in the laboratory frame in 3+1 dimensions. In particular we study the effects of nuclear thickness on the production of a glasma state in the McLerran-Venugopalan model within the color glass condensate framework. A finite thickness enables us to describe nuclei at lower energies, but forces us to abandon boost-invariance. As a consequence, random classical color sources within the nuclei have to be included in the simulation, which is achieved by using the colored particle-in-cell (CPIC) method. We show that the description in the laboratory frame agrees with boost-invariant approaches as a limiting case. Furthermore we investigate collisions beyond boost-invariance, in particular the pressure anisotropy in the glasma.