Ultrarelativistic nuclear collisions create a strongly interacting state of hot and dense quark-gluon matter that exhibits a remarkable collective flow behavior with minimal viscous dissipation. To gain deeper insights into its intrinsic nature and fundamental degrees of freedom, we determine the speed of sound in an extended volume of quark-gluon plasma using lead-lead (PbPb) collisions at a center-of-mass energy per nucleon pair of 5.02 TeV. The data were recorded by the CMS experiment at the CERN LHC and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 0.607 nb−1. The measurement is performed by studying the multiplicity dependence of the average transverse momentum of charged particles emitted in head-on PbPb collisions. Our findings reveal that the speed of sound in this matter is nearly half the speed of light, with a squared value of 0.241 ±0.002(stat) ±0.016(syst) in natural units. The effective medium temperature, estimated using the mean transverse momentum, is 219 ±8(syst)MeV. The measured squared speed of sound at this temperature aligns precisely with predictions from lattice quantum chromodynamic (QCD) calculations. This result provides a stringent constraint on the equation of state of the created medium and direct evidence for a deconfined QCD phase being attained in relativistic nuclear collisions.

Extracting the speed of sound in quark-gluon plasma with ultrarelativistic lead-lead collisions at the LHC

Ligabue F.;
2024

Abstract

Ultrarelativistic nuclear collisions create a strongly interacting state of hot and dense quark-gluon matter that exhibits a remarkable collective flow behavior with minimal viscous dissipation. To gain deeper insights into its intrinsic nature and fundamental degrees of freedom, we determine the speed of sound in an extended volume of quark-gluon plasma using lead-lead (PbPb) collisions at a center-of-mass energy per nucleon pair of 5.02 TeV. The data were recorded by the CMS experiment at the CERN LHC and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 0.607 nb−1. The measurement is performed by studying the multiplicity dependence of the average transverse momentum of charged particles emitted in head-on PbPb collisions. Our findings reveal that the speed of sound in this matter is nearly half the speed of light, with a squared value of 0.241 ±0.002(stat) ±0.016(syst) in natural units. The effective medium temperature, estimated using the mean transverse momentum, is 219 ±8(syst)MeV. The measured squared speed of sound at this temperature aligns precisely with predictions from lattice quantum chromodynamic (QCD) calculations. This result provides a stringent constraint on the equation of state of the created medium and direct evidence for a deconfined QCD phase being attained in relativistic nuclear collisions.
2024
Settore PHYS-01/A - Fisica sperimentale delle interazioni fondamentali e applicazioni
CMS; QCD equation of state; quark-gluon plasma; speed of sound; ultra-central
   Advanced Multi-Variate Analysis for New Physics Searches at the LHC
   AMVA4NewPhysics
   European Commission
   Horizon 2020 Framework Programme
   675440

   Search for Higgs bosons decaying to charm quarks
   HIGCC
   European Commission
   Horizon 2020 Framework Programme
   724704

   Direct and indirect searches for new physics in events with top quarks using LHC proton-proton collisions at the CMS detector
   LHCTOPVLQ
   European Commission
   Horizon 2020 Framework Programme
   752730

   Majorana neutrino discovery strategy with CMS
   MajorNet
   European Commission
   Horizon 2020 Framework Programme
   758316

   International Training Network for Statistics in High Energy Physics and Society
   INSIGHTS
   European Commission
   Horizon 2020 Framework Programme
   765710

   The strong interaction at the frontier of knowledge: fundamental research and applications
   STRONG-2020
   European Commission
   Horizon 2020 Framework Programme
   824093

   Vector Boson Scattering Coordination and Action Network
   VBSCan
   European Commission
   COST Action
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11384/149484
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