| dc.description.abstract | We develop a non-perturbative microscopic approach to study the quark-gluon plasma
(QGP), which treats all partons (light, heavy and static) in a unified framework. The starting
point is a relativistic effective Hamiltonian using a universal color force. Employing a
many-body T-matrix approach to solve the Hamiltonian non-perturbatively, we calculate
three sets of lattice QCD (lQCD) “observables": the equation of state (EoS), the heavy
quark (HQ) free energy (FQǬ, and quarkonium correlator ratios, to compare with corresponding
lQCD data. Newly developed methods are introduced to calculate both FQǬ,
using a static T-matrix, and EoS, using a resummed Luttinger-Ward functional. The lQCD
benchmarks constrain the inputs to the Hamiltonian. We find that the solution describing
the lQCD data is not unique. In order to determine the physical implications of the solutions,
two limiting cases are explored: a weakly coupled solution (WCS), which has
a weak color potential (close to free energy), resulting in sharp spectral functions (quasiparticle
spectral functions), and weak but sharp resonances near Tvc; and a strongly coupled
solution (SCS), which has a strong color potential (much larger than free energy), resulting
in broad (non-quasi-particle) parton spectral functions, and strong broad resonances near
Tvc. For a final determination of the microscopic picture of the QGP, these two solutions
are used to evaluate the HQ transport coefficients and the QGP viscosity. The transport
coefficients generated by the SCS are more consistent with phenomenological applications
to heavy-ion collisions. Particularly, we implement HQ transport coefficients in the HQ
Langevin simulations to generate heavy-meson spectra and compare with experimental
results. We find that the SCS is consistent with experimental results.'
[Editor’s note: In 2 cases, this symbol: Ǭ is as close as I could come to an uppercase Q with a line over it.] | en |
