Riemann Problems and Their Application to Ultra-Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions

摘要

Heavy ion collisions at sufficiently high energies to form quark-gluon plasma are considered. The phase transformation from a quark-gluon phase to hadrons as the nuclear matter cools is modeled as a hydrodynamical flow. Nonlinear waves are the predominant feature of this type of flow and the Riemann problem of a relativistic gas undergoing a phase transformation is explored as a method to numerically model this phase transition process in nuclear matter. The solution of the Riemann problem is outlined and results of preliminary numerical computations of the flow are presented. 10 refs., 2 figs. (ERA citation 11:052586)