Glauber Modeling in High Energy Nuclear Collisions

By Michael L. J. Miller, K. Reygers, S. Sanders, P. Steinberg. 2007

1,561 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We review the theoretical background, experimental techniques, and phenomenology of what is known in relativistic heavy ion physics as the Glauber model, which is used to calculate geometric quantities. A brief history of the original Glauber model is presented, with emphasis on its development into the purely classical, geometric picture used for present-day data analyses. Distinctions are made between the optical limit and Monte Carlo approaches, which are often used interchangeably but have some essential differences in particular contexts. The methods used by the four RHIC experiments are compared and contrasted, although the end results are reassuringly similar for the various geometric observables. Finally, several important RHIC measurements are highlighted that rely on geometric quantities, estimated from Glauber calculations, to draw insight from experimental observables. The status and future of Glauber modeling in the next generation of heavy ion physics studies is briefly discussed.

Subfields: Aerospace Engineering, Materials Chemistry, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c9a86fc430ec5a3cc4afeeb6d7bbf3aaf07585b7

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Citations in the corpus

Measurement of the inelastic proton-proton cross section at s√=7 TeV (2012, methodology): “The values of σinel are also used to estimate the number of pp interactions as a function of luminosity at colliders, and are relevant to studies of high-energy cosmic rays [7] and to the characterization of global properties of heavy-ion collisions, especially in the context of the Glauber model [8”
Nuclear modification factor of D0 mesons in PbPb collisions at sNN=5.02TeV (2017, background): “Energy loss can be studied using the nuclear modification factor (RAA), defined as the ratio of the PbPb yield to the pp cross-section scaled by the nuclear overlap function [8].”
Improved Monte Carlo Glauber predictions at present and future nuclear colliders (2017, methodology): “Indeed, quantities such as (i) the centrality dependence, expressed by the number of participating nucleons in the collision Npart(b), of any observable, (ii) the nuclear overlap function TAA(b) or the number of binary nucleon-nucleon collisions Ncoll(b) used to derive the nuclear modification facto”
Strongly correlated quantum fluids: ultracold quantum gases, quantum chromodynamic plasmas and holographic duality (2012, methodology): “σNN/π, where σNN is the total nucleon-nucleon inelastic cross section [248].”
Charged-particle nuclear modification factors in PbPb and pPb collisions at √(s_N N) = 5.02 TeV (2017, methodology): “The ratio of 〈Ncoll〉 with the total inelastic pp cross section, defined as TAA = 〈Ncoll〉/σ pp inel, is known as the nuclear overlap function and can be calculated from a Glauber model of the nuclear collision geometry [12].”
Relativistic Hydrodynamics in Heavy-Ion Collisions: General Aspects and Recent Developments (2016, background): “One additionally defines the “thickness function” [96],”
Evidence for transverse momentum and pseudorapidity dependent event plane fluctuations in PbPb and pPb collisions (2015, methodology): “Two different models of initial conditions, MC-Glauber [46, 47] and MC-KLN (motivated by the concept of gluon saturation) [48], are compared to data.”
Small System Collectivity in Relativistic Hadronic and Nuclear Collisions (2018, methodology): “The simplest such geometry is calculated via the billiard ball interaction picture encapsulated in Monte Carlo Glauber calculations (102).”