Van der Waals Interactions in the Hadron Resonance Gas Model

The Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) and its phase transition on the Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) phase diagram have been at the forefront of high energy physics research for the past few decades. In order to study the QGP and its thermodynamic behavior, many experiments have been undertaken to recreate this state of matter at particle colliders like the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN and the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. In addition to experiment, several theoretical models of the QGP have been developed which can then be compared to experimental results. In this thesis, we attempt to successfully implement one of these models, the ideal Hadron Resonance Gas (HRG) model, along with an extension of the model which includes van der Waals type interactions between pairs of baryons and antibaryons, called the Van der Waals Hadron Resonance Gas (VDW-HRG) Model. In order to determine if our implementations of the two models were successful, we compare our results for several observables at zero chemical potential to the results obtained in [1]. The observables calculated include the system's pressure, energy density, entropy density, the speed of sound, and the speci c heat at constant volume. After determining that our implementation of the VDW-HRG model was successful, we then venture out into nite chemical potential and again calculate the system's pressure, energy density, entropy density, number density and the second order uctuation of baryon number using the VDW-HRG model. Our results at nite chemical potential using the VDW-HRG model qualitatively behave as one would expect them to on the QCD phase diagram, further verifying the success of our implementation.Physics, Department ofHonors Colleg