Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Open Access

Causally connected regions in relativistic heavy ion collisions

Olivia Chabowski* and Joseph I. Kapusta†

  • *Contact author: chabo026@umn.edu
  • †Contact author: kapusta@umn.edu

Phys. Rev. C 114, 044909 – Published 27 October, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/9gxh-spl6

Abstract

Quantifying causal connections within fireballs resulting from high energy nucleus-nucleus collisions is pertinent to assessing the viability of several proposed mechanisms that directly influence particle production and correlations. Fireball causal connections have previously been studied in the context of 1+1 dimensional Bjorken flow. We expand into 3+1 dimensions using Gubser flow, which includes transverse expansion. Our findings suggest that the volume of these causally connected fireballs are on the order of 10–100 fm3 for observables dependent on the formation of the light quark condensates, but could be larger for other observables.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

References (21)

  1. U. Heinz and R. Snellings, Collective flow and viscosity in relativistic heavy-ion collisions, Annu. Rev. Nucl. Part. Sci. 63, 123 (2013).
  2. C. Gale, S. Jeon, and B. Schenke, Hydrodynamic modeling of heavy-ion collisions, Int. J. Mod. Phys. A 28, 1340011 (2013).
  3. P. Castorina and H. Satz, Causality constraints on hadron production in high energy collisions, Int. J. Mod. Phys. E 23, 1450019 (2014).
  4. J. S. Hamieh, K. Redlich, and A. Tounsi, Canonical description of strangeness enhancement from p-A to Pb-Pb collisions, Phys. Lett. B 486, 61 (2000).
  5. I. Kraus, J. Cleymans, H. Oeschler, K. Redlich, and S. Wheaton, Chemical equilibrium in collisions of small systems, Phys. Rev. C 76, 064903 (2007).
  6. I. Kraus, J. Cleymans, H. Oeschler, and K. Redlich, Particle production in p-p collisions and predictions for s=14 TeV at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC), Phys. Rev. C 79, 014901 (2009).
  7. S. Acharya et al. (ALICE Collaboration), Neutral to charged kaon yield fluctuations in Pb-Pb collisions at sNN=2.76 TeV, Phys. Lett. B 832, 137242 (2022).
  8. J. I. Kapusta, S. Pratt, and M. Singh, Disoriented isospin condensates may be the source of anomalous kaon correlations measured in Pb-Pb collisions at sNN=2.76 TeV, Phys. Rev. C 109, L031902 (2024).
  9. O. Chabowski, J. I. Kapusta, and M. Singh, Relaxation times for disoriented isospin condensates in high energy heavy ion collisions, Phys. Rev. C 111, 024903 (2025).
  10. D. Kharzeev, R. D. Pisarski, and M. H. G. Tytgat, Possibility of spontaneous parity violation in hot QCD, Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 512 (1998).
  11. D. Kharzeev and R. D. Pisarski, Pionic measures of parity and CP violation in high energy nuclear collisions, Phys. Rev. D 61, 111901 (2000).
  12. D. Kharzeev, Parity violation in hot QCD: Why it can happen, and how to look for it, Phys. Lett. B 633, 260 (2006).
  13. B. E. Aboona et al. (STAR Collaboration), Search for the chiral magnetic effect through beam energy dependence of charge separation using event shape selection, Phys. Lett. C 113, 014912 (2026).
  14. The STAR Collaboration, Charge separation measurements in Au+Au collisions at sNN = 7.7 to 200 GeV in search of the chiral magnetic effect, Chinese Phys. C 50, 094006 (2026).
  15. J. D. Bjorken, Highly relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions: The central rapidity region, Phys. Rev. D 27, 140 (1983).
  16. S. S. Gubser, Symmetry constraints on generalizations of Bjorken flow, Phys. Rev. D 82, 085027 (2010).
  17. S. S. Gubser and A. Yarom, Conformal hydrodynamics in Minkowski and de Sitter spacetimes, Nucl. Phys. B 846, 469 (2011).
  18. J.-F. Paquet, Thermal photon production in Gubser inviscid relativistic fluid dynamics, Phys. Rev. C 108, 064912 (2023).
  19. B. Schenke, P. Tribedy, and R. Venugopalan, Fluctuating glasma initial conditions and flow in heavy ion collisions, Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 252301 (2012).
  20. S. McDonald, C. Shen, F. Fillion-Gourdeau, S. Jeon, and C. Gale, Hydrodynamic predictions for Pb+Pb collisions at 5.02 TeV, Phys. Rev. C 95, 064913 (2017).
  21. B. Schenke, S. Jeon, and C. Gale, (3+1)D hydrodynamic simulation of relativistic heavy-ion collisions, Phys. Rev. C 82, 014903 (2010).

Outline

Information

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation