Investigating effects of the electrical conductivity of QCD matter on charge-dependent directed flow

TL;DR

This paper explores how the electric conductivity of quark-gluon plasma influences charge-dependent directed flow in heavy-ion collisions, using a 3+1D resistive magneto-hydrodynamic model to connect electromagnetic field evolution with observable flow differences.

Contribution

It introduces a numerical model solving 3+1D RRMHD equations to study the impact of electric conductivity on charge-dependent flow in symmetric Au+Au collisions at RHIC energies.

Findings

Charge-dependent flow differences are sensitive to plasma resistivity.

Electromagnetic field evolution affects charge-dependent flow observables.

Model emphasizes the importance of electric conductivity in interpreting heavy-ion collision data.

Abstract

Charge dependent directed flow is an important observable of electromagnetic fields in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. We demonstrate how the difference in charge dependent directed flows between protons and antiprotons is sensitive to the resistivity, inverse of quark-gluon plasma's electric conductivity, over different collision centralities. Our model numerically solves the 3+1D relativistic resistive magneto-hydrodynamic (RRMHD) equations, assuming the electric conductivity to be a scalar. For this work, we focus on symmetric Au + Au collisions at the top RHIC energy of $\sqrt{s}=200$ GeV. We illustrate the time evolution of the electromagnetic fields in our model and connect that to the charge dependent directed flow results. Our results highlight the importance of modeling quark-gluon plasma's electric conductivity for charge dependent observables in relativistic heavy-ion collisions.