Theories of Relativistic Dissipative Fluid Dynamics.

Relativistic dissipative fluid dynamics finds widespread applications in high-energy nuclear physics and astrophysics. However, formulating a causal and stable theory of relativistic dissipative fluid dynamics is far from trivial; efforts to accomplish this reach back more than 50 years. In this review, we give an overview of the field and attempt a comparative assessment of (at least most of) the theories for relativistic dissipative fluid dynamics proposed until today and used in applications.

Generating Spin Polarization from Vorticity through Nonlocal Collisions.

We derive the collision term in the Boltzmann equation using the equation of motion for the Wigner function of massive spin-1/2 particles. To next-to-lowest order in ℏ, it contains a nonlocal contribution, which is responsible for the conversion of orbital into spin angular momentum. In a proper choice of pseudogauge, the antisymmetric part of the energy-momentum tensor arises solely from this nonlocal contribution. We show that the collision term vanishes in global equilibrium and that the spin potential is, then, equal to the thermal vorticity. In the nonrelativistic limit, the equations of motion for the energy-momentum and spin tensors reduce to the well-known form for hydrodynamics for micropolar fluids.

Universal flow-driven conical emission in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions.

The double-peak structure observed in soft-hard hadron correlations is commonly interpreted as a signature for a Mach cone generated by a supersonic jet interacting with the hot and dense medium created in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions. We show that it can also arise due to averaging over many jet events in a transversally expanding background. We find that the jet-induced away-side yield does not depend on the details of the energy-momentum deposition in the plasma, the jet velocity, or the system size. Our claim can be experimentally tested by comparing soft-hard correlations induced by heavy-flavor jets with those generated by light-flavor jets.

Electromagnetic Meissner effect in spin-one color superconductors.

It is shown that color-superconducting quark matter, where quarks of the same flavor form Cooper pairs with spin one, exhibits an electromagnetic Meissner effect. This is in contrast to spin-zero color superconductors where Cooper pairs consist of quarks with different flavors.

Gauge field fluctuations and first-order phase transition in color superconductivity.

We study the gauge field fluctuations in dense quark matter and determine the temperature of the induced first-order phase transition to the color-superconducting phase in weak coupling. We find that the local approximation of the coupling between the gauge potential and the order parameter, employed in the Ginzburg-Landau theory, has to be modified by restoring the full momentum dependence of the polarization function of gluons in the superconducting phase.