Monday, 22 April 2024, 16:45 h, HIT H 42   

Enrico Speranza (CERN, Geneva)

Spinning the Primordial Liquid

Abstract:
Hydrodynamics is a cornerstone of physics. Formulated initially to describe the flow of water, it has since been successfully applied to model the collective motion of various systems at vastly different length scales, ranging from cosmological distances to the size of an atomic nucleus. In the hydrodynamic description, microscopic and quantum details of specific systems are "averaged over," producing an effective classical theory. Yet, we know that the physical world consists of interacting particles exhibiting inherent quantum properties. Thus, it is natural to ask how such collective behavior emerges from the underlying quantum theory and whether there are scenarios where quantum effects become amplified, influencing macroscopic hydrodynamic processes. In this talk, I will discuss the new developments that have contributed to the formulation of relativistic hydrodynamics with spin and quantum anomalies. I will focus on applications to the physics of the quark-gluon plasma, a relativistic quantum fluid created in heavy-ion collisions, which is also believed to have filled the Universe a few microseconds after the Big Bang.

Host: Nicolò Defenu