Microscopic Foundations of Relativistic Fluid Dynamics

This book provides an introduction to relativistic dissipative fluid dynamics, with particular emphasis on its derivation from microscopic transport theory.  After a phenomenological derivation of relativistic dissipative fluid dynamics from the second law of thermodynamics, the intrinsic instabilities of relativistic Navier-Stokes theory are discussed. In turn, analytical solutions of relativistic dissipative fluid dynamics are presented. Following, the authors discuss several theories and approaches to derive transport coefficients in dissipative fluid dynamics such as the Chapman-Enskog theory, the theory of Israel and Stewart, and a more recent derivation of relativistic dissipative fluid dynamics based on kinetic theory, which constitutes the main focus of the second part of this book.

This book is intended for advanced graduate students and researchers in physics and requires basic knowledge of the theory of special and general relativity. It should be of particular interest to researchers that apply relativistic fluid dynamics in cosmology, astrophysics, and high-energy nuclear physics.

Professor Gabriel Denicol received his Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics (with summa cum laude) from Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Germany, in 2012. His Ph.D. thesis discussed how relativistic dissipative fluid dynamics emerges from microscopic theory, generalizing the famous and well-known Israel-Stewart theory. He was a Banting postdoctoral fellow at McGill University, Montreal, Canada, from 2012 to 2015, where he focused on the fluid-dynamical description of the hot and dense nuclear matter created in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions. Afterwards, he became research assistant at Brookhaven National Laboratory, where he stayed until 2016. In 2016, he joined the Department of Physics at Federal University Fluminense, Niteroi, Brazil, as a Professor Adjunto. His current research fields are relativistic non-equilibrium phenomena, fluid dynamics, and transport theory. He was awarded the Bolsa de Produtividade fellowship from CNPq, which he maintains since 2016, and the Young Scientist fellowship, from FAPERJ, in 2018.

Professor Dirk Rischke received his Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics (with summa cum laude) from Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Germany, in 1993. In his Ph.D. thesis, he developed many-body approximations for the equation of state of hot and dense nuclear matter. After graduation, he was awarded a Lynen fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt foundation, with which he went to Columbia University in the City of New York from 1994 to 1996, where he worked on the hydrodynamical description of ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions. Afterwards, he spent one year as a postdoctoral fellow at Duke University, before joining Brookhaven National Laboratory as a RIKEN-BNL Fellow from 1997 to 2000 and his research focused on color-superconducting quark matter. In 2001, he joined Goethe University as a Full Professor for Theoretical Physics. His current research fields are hadrons in vacuum, hot and dense strongly interacting matter, and the theory of relativistic dissipative fluid dynamics. From 2017 to 2021, he was spokesperson of the DFG-funded Collaborative Research Center - TransRegio 211 Strong-interaction matter under extreme conditions. During his career, he has supervised more than 40 Ph.D. students and postdocs, some of them now hold positions in academia.