Cavitation and thermal photon production in relativistic heavy ion collisions

Understand

We investigate the thermal photon production-rates using one dimensional boost-invariant second order relativistic hydrodynamics to find proper time evolution of the energy density and the temperature.

• The effect of bulk-viscosity and non-ideal equation of state are taken into account in a manner consistent with recent lattice QCD estimates.
• It is shown that the \textit{non-ideal} gas equation of state i.e $\epsilon-3 P \neq 0$ behaviour of the expanding plasma, which is important near the phase-transition point, can significantly slow down the hydrodynamic expansion and thereby increase the photon production-rates.
• Inclusion of the bulk viscosity may also have similar effect on the hydrodynamic evolution.