Eur. Phys. J. C (2013) 73: 2524
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-013-2524-5

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

Relativistic viscous hydrodynamics for heavy-ion collisions with ECHO-QGP

¹ Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia, Università di Firenze, Via G. Sansone 1, 50019, Sesto F.no (Firenze), Italy
² Sezione di Firenze, INFN, Via G. Sansone 1, 50019, Sesto F.no (Firenze), Italy
³ Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, INAF, L. go E. Fermi 5, 50125, Firenze, Italy
⁴ Dipartimento di Fisica e Scienze della Terra, Università di Ferrara, Via Saragat 1, 44100, Ferrara, Italy
⁵ Sezione di Ferrara, INFN, Via Saragat 1, 44100, Ferrara, Italy
⁶ Physics Department, Theory Unit, CERN, 1211, Genève 23, Switzerland
⁷ Sezione di Torino, INFN, Via P. Giuria 1, 10125, Torino, Italy
⁸ Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, 60438, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

^* e-mail: luca.delzanna@unifi.it

Received: 14 June 2013
Revised: 18 July 2013
Published online: 21 August 2013

Abstract

We present ECHO-QGP, a numerical code for (3+1)-dimensional relativistic viscous hydrodynamics designed for the modeling of the space-time evolution of the matter created in high-energy nuclear collisions. The code has been built on top of the Eulerian Conservative High-Order astrophysical code for general relativistic magneto-hydrodynamics (Del Zanna et al. in Astron. Astrophys. 473:11, 2007] and here it has been upgraded to handle the physics of the Quark–Gluon Plasma. ECHO-QGP features second-order treatment of causal relativistic viscosity effects both in Minkowskian and in Bjorken coordinates; partial or complete chemical equilibrium of hadronic species before kinetic freeze-out; initial conditions based on the Glauber model, including a Monte-Carlo routine for event-by-event fluctuating initial conditions; a freeze-out procedure based on the Cooper–Frye prescription. The code is extensively validated against several test problems and results always appear accurate, as guaranteed by the combination of the conservative (shock-capturing) approach and the high-order methods employed. ECHO-QGP can be extended to include evolution of the electromagnetic fields coupled to the plasma.