6–10 Jul 2026
University of the Western Cape
Africa/Johannesburg timezone
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Implementing a Charm Equation of State in the QGP Hydrodynamic Simulation, Trajectum

8 Jul 2026, 16:20
1h 20m
Great Hall ( University of the Western Cape)

Great Hall

University of the Western Cape

Poster Presentation Track G - Theoretical and Computational Physics Poster Session 2

Speaker

Liam Harris (University of the Witwatersrand)

Description

The Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) is an exotic state of matter where fundamental quarks and gluons are decoupled and the result is a medium of strongly-interacting matter. This state of matter is only achievable under extreme conditions, such as the results of colliding nuclei in a particle collider such as those performed at the Large Hadron Collider and Brookhaven National Laboratory. Trajectum is a relativistic hydrodynamics simulation software, designed to reproduce the results of these heavy-ion collisions. The simulation involves the computation of the initial conditions, prehydrodynamic phase, hydrodynamic phase and final particlization. As part of the hydrodynamic phase, a lattice equation of state (EoS) is required to compute the thermodynamics of the QGP. A hadron resonance gas EoS is also required for the final particlization stage, and together they form a hybrid EoS to allow for a smooth transition between the two phases of matter. Previously, Trajectum utilized a (2+1) flavour lattice EoS which includes contributions from up, down and strange quarks. A newer, more sophisticated (2+1+1)-flavour EoS which includes the charm quark has since been computed. This project aims to implement two modifications to Trajectum. Firstly, by changing the interpolation method that connects the two equations of state from a standard polynomial interpolation method to a more modern, smooth function interpolation method. The second major modification is to implement the newer (2+1+1)-flavour lattice equation of state into the hydrodynamic stage. In doing this, we investigate the effect that the inclusion of the charm quark has on the QGP medium as a whole, as well as the possible reductions in runtime that the new interpolation method has on the simulation.

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Author

Liam Harris (University of the Witwatersrand)

Co-author

Isobel Kolbe (University of the Witwatersrand (ZA))

Presentation materials

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