Simulations Find 500 MeV Acceleration in Nuclear Fireballs, Opening New QCD Axis
Updated
Updated · SciTechDaily · Aug 4
Simulations Find 500 MeV Acceleration in Nuclear Fireballs, Opening New QCD Axis
3 articles · Updated · SciTechDaily · Aug 4
Summary
Fudan-led simulations found proper acceleration in quark-gluon plasma reaching several hundred MeV, with early deceleration near 500 MeV at lower collision energies from 3.5 GeV to 2.76 TeV.
The strongest acceleration formed at the fireball’s outer edge, where steep pressure drops and low enthalpy density combine under the relativistic Euler equation to drive rapid outward expansion.
That boundary-focused pattern appeared across both head-on and off-center collisions, while low-energy nuclear stopping and ultra-relativistic pass-through produced different time profiles of the effect.
The team says such acceleration could act as a new thermodynamic control parameter in QCD, potentially affecting chiral and deconfinement transitions through an Unruh-effect temperature near the QCD transition point.
Next, the researchers plan more realistic hydrodynamic modeling and experimental searches for signals such as hyperon spin polarization at RHIC and the LHC.