Seminar in Hadronic Physics

Spinodal density enhancements in fluid dynamical simulations of relativistic nuclear collisions

J. Steinheimer

LBNL

We recently introduced a fluid-dynamical model for simulating relativistic nuclear collisions in the presence of a first-order phase transition and made explorative studies of head-on lead-lead collisions. I will give here a detailed account of this novel theoretical tool and show studies of the phase-separation dynamics. I will show how to extract the density enhancement caused by the spinodal instabilities, the associated clump size distribution, and the resulting transverse flow velocity. Our results suggest that optimal collision energy corresponds to several GeV per nucleon of kinetic energy for a fixed-target configuration, a range that may be too low to access effectively at RHIC but which should match well with both FAIR and, especially, NICA.