The Effect of van der Waals Interactions on Transport Properties in a Hadron Gas

Abstract

The study of transport properties are crucial to analyze the QCD matter produced in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions. Their dependencies on quantities like temperature and chemical potential can help us to locate the phase transition boundary in the QCD phase diagram. In this work, we perform a study of the thermal conductivity, electrical conductivity, and the diffusivities in a hadron resonance gas with van der Waals (VDW) interactions. Both the attractive and repulsive interactions between the meson-meson and (anti)baryon-(anti)baryon have been taken care of within the model. The dissipative parameters have been calculated by using the Boltzmann Transport Equation (BTE) under the Relaxation Time Approximation (RTA). The effect of temperature and baryochemical potential on the conductivities are studied, which are then compared with several existing theoretical models. Indications of a possible first-order liquid-gas phase transition is seen at the higher baryochemical potential at low temperatures. Finally, we have also calculated the diffusivities in the hadronic medium, which decreases with the temperature and baryochemical potential. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024.