Chandrodoy Chattopadhyay

North Carolina State University, October 27, 12:00 pm

‘Far-off-equilibrium’ hydrodynamics in heavy-ion collisions

Hydrodynamics is expected to be valid only when a system is close to local thermodynamic equilibrium. However, the surprising success of relativistic hydrodynamics in modeling far-off-equilibrium dynamics of high energy nucleus-nucleus collisions has questioned this old adage. With the recent discovery of non-equilibrium attractors in flows relevant for such collisions, it seems possible to construct hydrodynamic theories without relying on the system’s proximity to thermodynamic equilibrium. In this talk, I shall discuss the physical origin of attractors and the reason for hydrodynamic theories to work even in highly out-of-equilibrium regimes. I shall also discuss scenarios where finite-order hydrodynamics breaks down and present the formulation of a macroscopic framework which can model the non-equilibrium evolution of a system with far more accuracy than hydrodynamics.