Covariant formulation of spinodal decomposition in rapidly expanding quark gluon plasma

TL;DR

This paper develops a covariant relativistic hydrodynamics framework incorporating phase boundary effects to better understand spinodal decomposition in rapidly expanding quark-gluon plasma, aiding experimental detection of phase transitions.

Contribution

It introduces covariant equations of hydrodynamics with phase boundaries and methods to extend the equation of state into metastable regions, modeling spinodal decomposition in expanding QGP.

Findings

Demonstrates effects of spinodal separation in Bjorken flow.

Provides prescriptions for extending equations of state.

Highlights importance of phase boundary effects in QGP modeling.

Abstract

Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) is expected to have a first order phase transition between the confined hadron gas and the deconfined quark gluon plasma at high baryon densities. This will result in phase boundary effects in the metastable and unstable regions. It is important to include these effects in phenomenological models of heavy ion collisions to identify experimental signatures of a phase transition. This requires building intuition on phase separation in rapidly expanding fluids. In this work we present the covariant equations of relativistic hydrodynamics with a phase boundary, provide prescriptions to extend the equation of state to metastable and unstable regions, and show the effects of spinodal separation in a Bjorken flow.