Colliding localized, lumpy holographic shocks with a granular nuclear structure

TL;DR

This paper uses a new technique to simulate realistic heavy ion collisions with granular nuclear structures in holography, revealing how vorticity and flow develop in the quark-gluon plasma.

Contribution

It introduces a simplified method for modeling localized holographic collisions with granular initial conditions, improving realism in heavy ion collision simulations.

Findings

Vorticity is mainly deposited away from the hydrodynamized region.

Relativistic corrections to thermal vorticity are significant in the hydrodynamized zone.

Transverse flow results align with previous models without granular initial conditions.

Abstract

We apply a recent and simple technique which speeds up the calculation of localized collisions in holography to study more realistic models of heavy ion collisions via the gauge/gravity duality. The initial data takes into account the lumpy nuclear structure of real heavy ions and the projectiles' aspect ratio mimics the Lorentz contraction of nuclei during RHIC collisions. At the hydrodynamization time of the central region of the quark gluon plasma developed during the collision, we find that most of the vorticity three vector's absolute value is deposited far away from the hydrodynamized part of the plasma. Only the relativistic corrections to the thermal vorticity in the hydrodynamized region are non-negligible. We compare the transverse flow after the collision determined in this work with previous results, without granular initial conditions and determine the proper energy density and fluid velocity in a hydrodynamized subregion of the plasma.