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arXiv · hep-ph/0111075

Early thermalization at RHIC

Ulrich W. Heinz·Peter F. Kolb
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Abstract

It is shown that recent RHIC data on hadron spectra and elliptic flow can be excellently reproduced within a hydrodynamic description of the collision dynamics, and that this provides strong evidence for rapid thermalization while the system is still in the quark-gluon plasma phase. But even though the hydrodynamic approach provides an impressive description of the single-particle momentum distributions, it fails to describe the two-particle momentum correlation (HBT) data for central Au+Au collisions at RHIC. We suggest that this is not likely to be repaired by further improvements in our understanding of the early collision stages, but probably requires a better modelling of the freeze-out process. We close with a prediction of the phases of the azimuthal oscillations of the HBT radii in noncentral collisions at RHIC.

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Ulrich W. Heinz, Peter F. Kolb. 2001-11-07. Early thermalization at RHIC. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0375-9474(02)00714-5

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