Coherent Bremsstrahlung Emission in the Early Stage of Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions

Abstract

We present a model of coherent Bremsstrahlung emission from the compression phase of relativistic heavy ion collisions based on a hydrodynamical description of the collision process. The decceleration of the matter through a shock front, calculated in 1-D relativistic dissipative hydrodynamics, is at the origin of a copious Bremsstrahlung emission. The interferences between the Bremsstrahlung emitted by two receeding shock fronts result in deviations from the usual $1/ω$ law, with in particular a strong suppression of low energy photons in symmetric collisions. We show how it might be possible to obtain information on the equation of state, possible transition to a quark gluon plasma and dynamical properties of the matter from the study of the interference pattern. We show that the optimal region for the observation of coherent photons is in SIS - AGS energy range.