QCD plasma equilibration, elliptic flow and jet-quenching - phenomena of common origin
Abstract
Fast thermalization, a subsequent strong buildup of elliptic flow of QCD matter and jet-quenching as found at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) are understood as the consequence of perturbative QCD (pQCD) interactions within the 3+1 dimensional parton cascade BAMPS. The main contributions stem from pQCD inspired bremsstrahlung. Comparisons to Au+Au data of the flow parameter v2 as a function of participation number as well as the gluonic contribution to the nuclear modification factor RAA for most central collisions are given. Also the shear viscosity to entropy ratio is dynamically extracted, which lies in the range of 0.08-0.15, depending on the chosen coupling constant.
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