Polarization and Vorticity in the Quark Gluon Plasma

Understand

The quark-gluon plasma produced by collisions between ultra-relativistic heavy nuclei is well described in the language of hydrodynamics.

• Non-central collisions are characterized by very large angular momentum, which in a fluid system manifests as flow vorticity.
• This rotational structure can lead to a spin polarization of the hadrons that eventually emerge from the plasma, providing experimental access to flow substructure at unprecedented detail.
• Recently, first observations of $\Lambda$ hyperon polarization along the direction of collisional angular momentum have been reported.