Bulk viscous corrections to photon production in the quark-gluon plasma

Abstract

Photons radiated in heavy-ion collisions are a penetrating probe, and as such can play an important role in the determination of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) transport coefficients. In this work we calculate the bulk viscous correction to photon production in two-to-two scattering reactions. Phase-space integrals describing the bulk viscous correction are evaluated explicitly in order to avoid the forward scattering approximation which is shown to be poor for photons at lower energies. We furthermore present hydrodynamical simulations of AA collisions focusing on the effect of this calculation on photonic observables. Bulk corrections are shown to reduce the elliptic flow of photons at higher $p_T$.