Projection method and new formulation of leading-order anisotropic hydrodynamics

Abstract

The introduced earlier projection method for boost-invariant and cylindrically symmetric systems is used to introduce a new formulation of anisotropic hydrodynamics that allows for three substantially different values of pressure acting locally in three different directions. Our considerations are based on the Boltzmann kinetic equation with the collision term treated in the relaxation time approximation and the momentum anisotropy is included explicitly in the leading term of the distribution function. A novel feature of our work is the complete analysis of the second moment of the Boltzmann equation, in addition to the zeroth and first moments that have been analyzed in earlier studies. We define the final equations of anisotropic hydrodynamics in the leading order as a subset of the analyzed moment equations (and their linear combinations) which agree with the Israel-Stewart theory in the case of small pressure anisotropies.