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Center for Nonlinear Studies |
The polarization of the Λ hyperon has become an important probe of the Quark-Gluon Plasma produced in heavy-ion collisions. Recently, it has been found that polarization receives a substantial contribution from a term proportional to the symmetric derivative of the four-temperature, the thermal shear tensor. We review the theoretical derivation of this result using the local equilibrium density operator and discuss numerical computations for Au-Au collisions at 200 GeV. It is shown that, provided that the hadronization hypersurface is isothermal, the thermal shear can restore the agreement between the experimental measurements and the predictions of the hydrodynamic model, solving the long-standing "polarization sign-puzzle".
Bio:Dr. Andrea Palermo is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Stony Brook University, where he specializes in theoretical physics with a focus on spin polarization in the quark gluon plasma. Having completed a joint doctoral program between the University of Florence and Goethe University Frankfurt, his research interests encompass topics such as relativistic hydrodynamics, kinetic theory, and thermal field theory. In his PhD thesis, "Spin polarization in the strongly interacting QCD matter at global and local equilibrium", he worked on new analytical techniques to address expectation values in relativistic fluids at equilibrium with rotation and acceleration and contributed to the discovery of the so called "Shear induced polarization".
Host: Paolo Braccia (T-4)