Special Physics Seminar

How big are the smallest drops of quark-gluon plasma?

Paul Chesler

Harvard University

Recent data from RHIC and the LHC suggest that a quark-gluon plasma - whose evolution is governed by hydrodynamics - can be produced in proton-nucleus and proton-proton collisions. However, at experimentally accessible energies, microscopic scales such as the mean free path are probably not too different than the system size. How can hydrodynamics - a long distance, late time effective theory - govern dynamics in such tiny systems? Using holographic duality, I will demonstrate the robustness of hydrodynamics in microscopically small systems and discuss mechanisms by which hydrodynamics can eventually break down.