Reversing a heavy-ion collision

Abstract

We introduce a novel approach to study the longitudinal hydrodynamic expansion of the quark-gluon fluid created in heavy-ion collisions. It consists of two steps: First, we apply the maximum entropy method to reconstruct the freeze-out surface from experimentally measured particle distribution. We then take the output of the reconstruction as the "initial" condition to evolve the system back in time by solving the 1+1 ideal hydrodynamic equations analytically, using the method of Khalatnikov and Landau. We find an approximate Bjorken-like plateau in the energy density vs rapidity profile at the early times, which shrinks with time as the boundary shocks propagate inward. In Bjorken frame, the fluid velocity is close to zero within the plateau, as in the Bjorken solution, but increases outside the plateau. The results carry implications for fully numerical hydrodynamic simulations as well as models of heavy-ion collisions based on gauge-gravity duality.