language: en

[Confidential: not for distribution. Submitted to IOP Publishing for peer review]

29 March 2010

New developments in relativistic dissipative fluid dynamics

Azwinndini Muronga 1,2
1 Centre for Theoretical Physics and Astrophysics, Department of Physics, University of Cape Town,
Private Bag X3, Rondebosch 7701, Cape Town, South Africa
2 UCT-CERN Research Centre, Department of Physics, University of Cape Town,
Private Bag X3, Rondebosch 7701, Cape Town, South Africa
E-mail: Azwinndini.Muronga@uct.ac.za

Abstract. The recent notion of the perfect fluid created at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) has been embraced by many experimentalists and theorists alike. However much of the evidence to this notion has been based on the success of describing some experimental observables by non-viscous hydrodynamics or by small shear viscosity to entropy density ratio. Developments on viscous hydrodynamics evolved from (0+1) dimensions (Bjorken scaling solution) over (1+1) dimensions (Bjorken + transverse flow) to (2+1) dimensions (Elliptic flow) and currently (3+1) dimensions. There still exists some formal issues concerning the allowed form of the relativistic viscous hydrodynamic equations and what effects the new additional or higher-order terms will have on the space-time evolution and the experimental observables. Starting with a brief introduction of the basics of relativsitic fluid dynamics, I will discuss our current knowledge of relativistic theory of fluid dynamics in the presence of dissipative fluxes.

1. Introduction