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An equation-of-state-meter of quantum chromodynamics transition from deep learning

L. Pang, K. Zhou, Nan Su, H. Petersen, H. Stöcker, Xin-Nian Wang

Nature Communications, 2018

169 citations

Abstract

A primordial state of matter consisting of free quarks and gluons that existed in the early universe a few microseconds after the Big Bang is also expected to form in high-energy heavy-ion collisions. Determining the equation of state (EoS) of such a primordial matter is the ultimate goal of high-energy heavy-ion experiments. Here we use supervised learning with a deep convolutional neural network to identify the EoS employed in the relativistic hydrodynamic simulations of heavy ion collisions. High-level correlations of particle spectra in transverse momentum and azimuthal angle learned by the network act as an effective EoS-meter in deciphering the nature of the phase transition in quantum chromodynamics. Such EoS-meter is model-independent and insensitive to other simulation inputs including the initial conditions for hydrodynamic simulations. The large data generated in heavy-ion collision experiments require careful analysis to understand the physics. Here the authors use the deep-learning method to sort equation of states in QCD transition and analyze the simulated data sets mimicking the heavy-ion collision experiments.

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