We calculate the lowest-order contribution to the cross section for simultaneous excitation of projectile and target nuclei in relativistic heavy ion collisions. This process is, to leading order, non-classical and adds incoherently to the well-studied semi-classical Weizsäcker-Williams cross section. While the leading contribution to the cross section is down by only 1/Z P from the semiclassic...

The relativistic hydrodynamic approach is used to describe production of strangeness and/or heavy quarks in ultrarelativistic heavy ion reactions. Production processes are important ingredients of dissipative effects in the hadronic liquid. Beyond viscosity also chemoand thermo-diffusion processes are considered. This also allows to specify chemical and thermal freeze-out conditions. Submitted ...

Under very general assumptions we show that the quark dispersion relation in the quark-gluon plasma is given by two collective branches, of which one has a minimum at a nonvanishing momentum. This general feature of the quark dispersion relation leads to structures (van Hove singularities, gaps) in the low mass dilepton production rate, which might provide a unique signature for the quark-gluon...

Significant progress has been made on addressing critical issues for inertial fusion energy (IFE) chambers for heavy-ion, laser and Z-pinch drivers. A variety of chamber concepts are being investigated including drywall (currently favored for laser IFE), wetted-wall (applicable to both laser and ion drivers), and thickliquid-wall (favored by heavy ion and z-pinch drivers). Recent progress and r...

We report the present status on the construction of an equation of state (EoS) for the strongly interacting matter which is to be used in the hydrodynamical calculations for the ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions. In the present version, the conservation of isospin, baryon number and strangeness are taken into account. A preliminary hydrodynamical result for our EoS, using the hydro code S...

We review recent work on understanding the next to leading order corrections to the classical fields that dominate the initial stages of a heavy ion collision. We have recently shown that the leading ln 1/x divergences of these corrections to gluon multiplicities can be factorized into the JIMWLK evolution of the color charge density distributions.

We reconsider the old problem of the dynamics of spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB) using 3D lattice simulations. We develop a theory of tachyonic preheating, which occurs due to the spinodal instability of the scalar field. Tachyonic preheating is so efficient that SSB typically completes within a single oscillation as the field rolls towards the minimum of its effective potential. We show th...

Pre-thermal flow plays an important role in the final state evolution of heavy ion collisions at RHIC. We show that flow has universal features for a wide range of models. This significantly reduces the uncertainty in initializing hydrodynamic models at RHIC.

We discuss the question of thermalization during the very early stages of a high energy heavy ion collision. We review a recent study where we explicitely showed that, contrarily to a widely used assumption, elastic collisions between the produced partons are not sufficient to rapidly drive the system toward local kinetic equilibrium. We then briefly discuss recent developments concerning the d...