Causally connected regions in relativistic heavy ion collisions

Abstract

Quantifying causal connections within fireballs resulting from high energy nucleus-nucleus collisions is pertinent to assessing the viability of several proposed mechanisms that directly influence particle production and correlations. Fireball causal connections have previously been studied in the context of 1+1 dimensional Bjorken flow. We expand into 3+1 dimensions using Gubser flow, which includes transverse expansion. Our findings suggest that the volume of these causally connected fireballs are on the order of 10 to 100 fm$^3$ for observables dependent on the formation of the light quark condensates, but could be larger for other observables.