Eur. Phys. J. C (2007) 51: 677-687
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-007-0308-5

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

Causal viscous hydrodynamics for central heavy-ion collisions

¹ Fakultät für Physik, Universität Bielefeld, 33501, Bielefeld, Germany
² Institute for Nuclear Theory, University of Washington, Box 351550, Seattle, WA, 98195, USA

^* e-mail: paulrom@phys.washington.edu

Received: 11 December 2006
Revised: 19 February 2007
Published online: 3 May 2007

Abstract

We study causal viscous hydrodynamics in the context of central relativistic heavy-ion collisions and provide details of a straightforward numerical algorithm to solve the hydrodynamic equations. It is shown that correlation functions of fluctuations provide stringent test cases for any such numerical algorithm. Passing these tests, we study the effects of viscosity on the temperature profile in central heavy-ion collisions. Also, we find that it is possible to counter-act the effects of viscosity to some extent by re-adjusting the initial conditions. However, viscous corrections are strongest for high-mass particles, signaling the breakdown of hydrodynamic descriptions for large η/s.