High Energy Theory Seminar

An SO(3) subgroup of the conformal group in four dimensions can be used to study aspects of hadronic collisions. Two examples are the hydrodynamic flow at times well before freeze-out and the characterization of initial state in terms of a saturation scale. To illustrate the first example, I will explain an exact solution of the Navier-Stokes equations with SO(3) symmetry. To illustrate the second example, I will point out how the same SO(3) symmetry leads to a simple ansatz for the Balitsky-Kovchegov equation. Part of the motivation for using this SO(3) conformal symmetry comes from AdS/CFT, but the main results can be understood without referring to the duality.