Nuclear Physics Seminar

I will present a method to improve the description of dissipative dynamics in the presence of large momentum-space anisotropies. I do this by reorganizing the canonical hydrodynamic expansion of the distribution function around a momentum-space anisotropic ansatz rather than an isotropic equilibrium one. At leading order the result obtained is two coupled ordinary differential equations for the momentum-space anisotropy and typical momentum of the degrees of freedom. I show that this framework can reproduce both the ideal hydrodynamic and free streaming limits. Additionally, I demonstrate that when linearized the resulting nonlinear differential equations reduce to 2nd order Israel-Stewart viscous hydrodynamics. I then make quantitative comparisons of the evolution of the pressure anisotropy within our approach and 2nd order viscous hydrodynamics in both the strong and weak coupling limits. Finally, I discuss recent work to extend the approach to include transverse expansion and breaking of boost-invariance.