Cavitation and thermal dilepton production in QGP

We study the effects of bulk and shear viscosities on both hydrodynamical evolution and thermal dilepton emission rate from the QGP phase at RHIC energies. We use lattice QCD inspired parametrization for the bulk viscosity and trace anomaly (equation of state) to describe behavior of the system near the critical temperature T-c. Ratio of the shear viscosity to entropy density is taken to be eta/s similar to 1/4 pi. We calculate the corrections on the dilepton production rates due to modification in the distribution function, arising due to the presence of the bulk and shear viscosities. It is shown that when the system temperature evolves close to T-c the effect of the bulk viscosity on the dilepton emission rates cannot be ignored. It is demonstrated that the hulk viscosity can suppress the thermal dilepton spectra where as the effect of the shear viscosity is to enhance it. Further we show that the bulk viscosity driven fragmentation or cavitation can set in very early during the hydrodynamical evolution and this in turn would make the hydrodynamical treatment invalid beyond the cavitation time. We find that even though the finite bulk viscosity corrections and the onset of the cavitation reduce the production rates, the effect of the minimal eta/s = 1/4 pi can enhance the dilepton production rates significantly in the regime p(T) >= 2 GeV. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.