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Nonequilibrium phase transitions in chiral fluid dynamics including dissipation and fluctuation
(2011)
Chiral fluid dynamics combines the fluid dynamic expansion of a hot and dense plasma created in a heavy-ion collision with the explicit propagation of fluctuations at the chiral phase transition of quantum chromodynamics. From systems in equilibrium long-range fluctuations are expected at a conjectured critical point. Heavy-ion collisions are, however, finite in size and time and very dynamic. It is thus likely that nonequilibrium effects diminish the signal of a critical point. They can, however, stimulate phenomena at a first order phase transitions, like nucleation and spinodal decomposition. Both of phase transition scenarios are investigated in this work. Based on the linear sigma model with constituent quarks a consistent quantum field theoretical approach using the two-particle irreducible effective action is developed to derive both, the local equilibrium properties of the expanding quark fluid and the damping and noise terms in the Langevin equation of the order parameter of the phase transition, the sigma field. Within this formalism it is possible to obtain a conserved energy-momentum tensor of the coupled system. It describes the energy dissipation from the sigma field to the heat bath during relaxation. Within this model we investigate nonequilibrium phenomena in a scenario with a critical point and a first order phase transition. We observe long relaxation times at the phase transition, phase coexistence at the first order phase transition and critical slowing down at the critical point. We find a substantial supercooling in a first order phase transition in our model and due to the energy-momentum exchange also reheating is present. While at the critical point the correlation length increases slightly we find an enhanced intensity of nonequilibrium fluctuations at the first order phase transition, which leads to an increased production of sigma mesons.