Constraining Light and Strange Flavor Equilibration in Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions

[2608.27687] Constraining Light and Strange Flavor Equilibration in Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions Skip to main content Search Submit Donate Log in High Energy Physics - Phenomenology arXiv:2608.27687 (hep-ph) [Submitted on 27 Aug 2026] Title: Constraining Light and Strange Flavor Equilibration in Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions Authors: Andrew Gordeev View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract: Relativistic heavy-ion collisions are the only known means of creating the quark-gluon plasma, a deconfined state of QCD matter. Hydrodynamic modeling has established that this medium behaves as a strongly coupled, low-viscosity fluid, but typically assumes that its quark and gluon composition reaches chemical equilibrium by the onset of the hydrodynamic phase. This assumption remains uncertain: gluon-dominated initial states suggest that quark production continues well into the hydrodynamic stage, with potentially different rates for light and strange quarks. This dissertation develops a dynamical framework for light and strange quark chemical equilibration. Incomplete equilibration of each flavor is described through time-dependent quark fugacities that modify both the equation of state and the particlization of the medium. Implemented within a multistage framework of fluctuating initial conditions, viscous hydrodynamics, particlization, and hadronic transport, the model is used to study the effects of equilibration on the hydrodynamic evolution and on hadronic and electromagnetic observables. The framework is embedded within a Bayesian analysis in which Gaussian process emulators trained on the model calculations infer the initial light and strange quark fugacities, their equilibration timescales, and selected transport coefficients from Au+Au collision data at RHIC. The strange sector is found to begin substantially undersaturated, more suppressed than the light sector; the data further favor a slower approach to equilibrium for strangeness, though the timescales themselves remain weakly constrained. These results favor a quark-gluon plasma whose flavor composition is still approaching chemical equilibrium during the hydrodynamic phase rather than fixed at its outset, and motivate extensions to collision systems of differing size and energy. Comments: PhD dissertation, 191 pages, 54 figures Subjects: High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) ; Nuclear Theory (nucl-th) Cite as: arXiv:2608.27687 [hep-ph] (or arXiv:2608.27687v1 [hep-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.27687 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite Submission history From: Andrew Gordeev [ view email ] [v1] Thu, 27 Aug 2026 20:23:28 UTC (13,460 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View PDF HTML (experimental) TeX Source view license Current browse context: hep-ph < prev | next > new | recent | 2026-08 Change to browse by: nucl-th References & Citations INSPIRE HEP SciX Google Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer ( What is the Explorer? ) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers ( What is Connected Papers? ) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps ( What is Litmaps? ) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations ( What are Smart Citations? ) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv ( What is alphaXiv? ) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers ( What is CatalyzeX? ) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub ( What is DagsHub? ) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub ( What is GotitPub? ) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face ( What is Huggingface? ) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast ( What is ScienceCast? ) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate ( What is Replicate? ) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces ( What is Spaces? ) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI ( What is TXYZ.AI? ) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower ( What are Influence Flowers? ) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender ( What is CORE? ) IArxiv recommender toggle IArxiv Recommender ( What is IArxiv? ) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs . Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax ( What is MathJax? ) We gratefully acknowledge support from our major funders , member institutions , and all contributors. About · Help · Contact · Subscribe · Copyright · Privacy · Accessibility · Operational Status (opens in new tab)

Related documents

• Constraining Light and Strange Flavor Equilibration in Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions#779610
• Transport phenomena and observables associated with viscous properties of an anisotropic hot QCD medium at finite baryon asymmetry#1117524
• Adiabatic hydrodynamization with transverse spatial gradients in boost-invariant plasmas#1034504
• Application of the Holographic Equation of State for Numerical Modeling of the Evolution of Quark-Gluon Plasma#1034652
• Dynamical correlations across momentum scales in the quark-gluon plasma#798693