NPA Seminar: Mike Sas, Utrecht University

Event time: 
Tuesday, June 17, 2025 - 1:00pm to 2:00pm
Location: 
Wright Lab (), WL-216 (Conference Room) See map
272 Whitney Avenue
New Haven, CT 06511
Event description: 

Talk Title: Exploring quark-gluon plasma temperatures using thermal photon and dilepton production

Abstract:

Thermal electromagnetic radiation is emitted all throughout the space-time evolution of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP), which we are able to create in heavy-ion collisions at CERN. The production rate of this radiation depends on the QGP temperature, which is a key parameter to understand the dynamics of the system. So far there is no high precision measurement of the QGP temperature at LHC energies.

In this talk I will give a comprehensive overview of different methods to estimate the effective temperature of the QGP, obtained from thermal photon transverse momentum and thermal dilepton invariant mass distributions using the Trajectum heavy-ion code.. I will show that thermal photons are nearly insensitive to the temperature of the QGP, due to their blue shift, while thermal dileptons are much better probes as we are able to perform the measurement using invariant quantities.

Host: John Harris

Open to: 
undergraduate