Nuclear Physics Seminar

Hadronic Transport Coefficients from a Microscopic Transport Model

Ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions at RHIC are thought to have created a Quark-Gluon-Plasma (QGP) with a very low shear viscosity in the deconfined phase. However, as the QGP hadronizes it will evolve through a hadronic phase with rapidly increasing viscosity. In order to fully characterize the QGP state, one has to separately determine the viscosity of the hadronic phase. It has been argued that the shear viscosity to entropy density ratio eta/s reaches a minimum near the deconfinement transition, and the corresponding ratio for the bulk viscosity zeta/s reaches a maximum near T_c. We simulate a hadronic medium using the Ultrarelativistic Quantum Molecular Dynamics (UrQMD) model in a box with periodic boundary conditions, and present a calculation of the shear viscosity coefficient and eta/s of hadronic matter in equilibrium as a function of temperature and pion/baryo-chemical potential. We find that eta/s decreases at finite chemical potential(s), which is an important prerequisite for understanding the application of viscous hydrodynamics calculations to RHIC energies. In addition, results for the baryon number diffusion coefficient and bulk viscosity will be discussed.