Eero Aleksi Kurkela | Universitetet i Stavanger

E 540

Det teknisk-naturvitenskapelige fakultet
Institutt for matematikk og fysikk

Bio

I study how ordinary matter behaves in extraordinary conditions. Ultrarelativistic nuclear collisions in modern particle colliders -- such as the LHC at CERN -- smash together atomic nuclei creating a fireball so hot (about a million times the temperature of the core of the sun!) that protons and neutrons melt to their fundamental constituents and a new form of elementary particle matter, Quark Matter, is created. This soup of elementary particles filled the universe when it was in its infancy and it has been conjectured that it may be found in the cores of the most dense astrophysical objects, in the cores of neutron stars.

How quark matter behaves and under which conditions it is formed is governed by the fundamental theory of Quantum Chromodynamics or QCD -- the part of the Standard Model of particle physics responsible for the strong nuclear interactions. My research utilises QCD to model the nuclear collisions and cores of neutron stars and leverages the synergies between particle physics and astrophysics.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:

On phenomenology of neutron stars and quark matter:

- E. Annala, T. Gorda, A. Kurkela, J. Nättilä and A. Vuorinen, Evidence for quark-matter cores in massive neutron stars, Nature Phys. (2020), [arXiv:1903.09121 [astro-ph.HE]].

- T. Gorda, A. Kurkela, P. Romatschke, M. Säppi and A. Vuorinen, Next-to-Next-to-Next-to-Leading Order Pressure of Cold Quark Matter: Leading Logarithm, Phys. Rev. Lett. 121 (2018) no.20, 202701, [arXiv:1807.04120 [hep-ph]].

- E. Annala, T. Gorda, A. Kurkela and A. Vuorinen, Gravitational-wave constraints on the neutron-star-matter Equation of State, Phys. Rev. Lett. 120 (2018) no.17, 172703, [arXiv:1711.02644 [astro-ph.HE]].

- A. Kurkela and A. Vuorinen, Cool quark matter, Phys. Rev. Lett. 117 (2016) no.4, 042501[arXiv:1603.00750 [hep-ph]].

On far-from-equilibrium quantum fields and thermalization:

- D. Almaalol, A. Kurkela and M. Strickland, Non-equilibrium attractor in high-temperature QCD plasmas, Phys. Rev. Lett. 125 (2020) no.12, 122302, [arXiv:2004.05195 [hep-ph]].

- A. Kurkela, W. van der Schee, U.A. Wiedemann and B. Wu, Early- and Late-Time Behavior of Attractors in Heavy-Ion Collisions, Phys. Rev. Lett. 124 (2020) no.10, 102301 [arXiv:1907.08101 [hep-ph]].

- A. Kurkela and E. Lu, Approach to Equilibrium in Weakly Coupled Non-Abelian Plasmas, Phys. Rev. Lett. 113 (2014)no.18, 182301[arXiv:1405.6318 [hep-ph]].

On phenomenology of ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions:

- A. Kurkela and A. Mazeliauskas, Chemical Equilibration in Hadronic Collisions, Phys. Rev. Lett. 122 (2019), 142301 [arXiv:1811.03040 [hep-ph]].

- A. Kurkela, A. Mazeliauskas, J. F. Paquet, S. Schlichting and D. Teaney, Matching the Nonequilibrium Initial Stage of Heavy Ion Collisions to Hydrodynamics with QCD Kinetic Theory, Phys. Rev. Lett. 122 (2019) no.12, 122302,[arXiv:1805.01604 [hep-ph]].

- A. Kurkela and Y. Zhu, Isotropization and hydrodynamization in weakly coupled heavy-ion collisions, Phys. Rev. Lett. 115(2015) no.18, 182301[arXiv:1506.06647 [hep-ph]].