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Ollitrault, Jean-Yves

Publications and source records attributed to Ollitrault, Jean-Yves.

5 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2023

Measures of azimuthal anisotropy in high-energy collisions

Azimuthal anisotropy is a key observation made in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions. This phenomenon has played a crucial role in the development of the field over the last two decades. In addition to its interest for studying the quark-gluon plasma, which was the original motivation, it is sensitive to the properties of incoming nuclei, in particular to the nuclear deformation and to the nuclear skin. The azimuthal anisotropy is therefore of crucial importance when relating low-energy nuclear structure to high-energy nuclear collisions. Furthermore, this article is an elementary introduction to the various observables used in order to characterize azimuthal anisotropy, which go under the names of v 2 {2}, v 3 {2}, v 2 {4}, etc. The intended audience is primarily physicists working in the field of nuclear structure.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Non-Gaussian transverse momentum fluctuations from impact parameter fluctuations

The transverse momentum per particle, [p t ], fluctuates event by event in ultrarelativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions, for a given multiplicity. These fluctuations are small and approximately Gaussian, but a nonzero skewness has been predicted on the basis of hydrodynamic calculations, and seen experimentally. We argue that the mechanism driving the skewness is that, if the system thermalizes, the mean transverse momentum increases with impact parameter for a fixed collision multiplicity. We postulate that fluctuations are Gaussian at fixed impact parameter, and that non-Gaussianities solely result from impact parameter fluctuations. Using recent data on the variance of [p t ] fluctuations, we make quantitative predictions for their skewness and kurtosis as a function of the collision multiplicity. Here, we predict, in particular, a spectacular increase of the skewness below the knee of the multiplicity distribution, followed by a fast decrease.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2021

Correlation between mean transverse momentum and anisotropic flow in heavy-ion collisions

The correlation between the mean transverse momentum of outgoing particles, $\langle{p_t}\rangle$, and the magnitude of anisotropic flow, v n , has recently been measured in Pb+Pb collisions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider, as a function of the collision centrality. Here, we confirm the previous observation that event-by-event hydrodynamics predicts a correlation between v n and $\langle{p_t}\rangle$ that is similar to that measured in data. We show that the magnitude of this correlation can be directly predicted from the initial condition of the hydrodynamic calculation, for n = 2, 3, if one replaces v n by the corresponding initial-state anisotropy, ε n , and $\langle{p_t}\rangle$ by the total energy per unit rapidity of the fluid at the beginning of the hydrodynamic expansion.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2021

Skewness of mean transverse momentum fluctuations in heavy-ion collisions

We propose the skewness of mean transverse momentum, $\langle{p_t}\rangle$, fluctuations as a fine probe of hydrodynamic behavior in relativistic nuclear collisions. We describe how the skewness of the $\langle{p_t}\rangle$ distribution can be analyzed experimentally, and we use hydrodynamic simulations to predict its value. We predict in particular that $\langle{p_t}\rangle$ fluctuations have positive skew, which is significantly larger than if particles were emitted independently. We elucidate the origin of this result by deriving generic formulas relating the fluctuations of $\langle{p_t}\rangle$ to the fluctuations of the early-time thermodynamic quantities. We postulate that the large positive skewness of $\langle{p_t}\rangle$ fluctuations is a generic prediction of hydrodynamic models.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗