A critical review of RHIC experimental results

The relativistic heavy-ion collider (RHIC) was constructed to achieve an asymptotic state of nuclear matter in heavy-ion collisions, a near-ideal gas of deconfined quarks and gluons denoted quark–gluon plasma or QGP. RHIC collisions are indeed very different from the hadronic processes observed at the Bevalac and AGS, but high-energy elementary-collision mechanisms are also non-hadronic. The two-component model (TCM) combines measured properties of elementary collisions with the Glauber eikonal model to provide an alternative asymptotic limit for A–A collisions. RHIC data have been interpreted to indicate formation of a strongly-coupled QGP (sQGP) or "perfect liquid". In this review, I consider the experimental evidence that seems to support such conclusions and alternative evidence that may conflict with those conclusions and suggest different interpretations.

Large-Eddy Simulation With Simplified Collisional Microdynamics in a High Reynolds Number Particle-Laden Channel Flow

Computing high Reynolds number channel flows laden by heavy solid particles requires excessive CPU resources to calculate interparticle collisions. Since the frequency of these collisions is high, the kinematic details of each elementary collision may not be essential when calculating particle statistics. In this paper, the dynamics of a particle with a phase trajectory that is discontinuous (due to collisions) is simulated using a hypothetical “noncolliding” particle moving along a trajectory smoothed over interparticle collisions. The statistical temperature of this particle is assumed to be in equilibrium with the statistical “temperature” of the resolved turbulence. This simplified microdynamic is introduced into ballistic calculations of particles within the framework of the “two-way” LES approach. The simulation was conducted specifically to compare the velocity statistics of the hypothetical particle with statistics yielded by measurements in the gas∕particle channel flow and by the LES∕particle approach where binary collisions were simulated. This paper shows that, by assuming the universality of collisional microdynamics, one may predict the experimental observation and the results of detailed simulations without requiring supplementary CPU resources to compute the binary collisions.

ON THE EXACT IDENTITY BETWEEN THERMODYNAMIC AND INFORMATIC ENTROPIES IN A UNITARY MODEL OF FRICTION

We consider an elementary collision model of a molecular reservoir upon which an external field is applied and the work is dissipated into heat. To realize macroscopic irreversibility at the microscopic level, we introduce a "graceful" irreversible map which randomly mixes the identities of the molecules. This map is expected to generate informatic entropy exactly equal to the independently calculable irreversible thermodynamic entropy.