Consistent treatment of thermal fluctuations in relativistic heavy ion collisions

Heavy ion collision experiments are appropriate systems for studying QCD at high energies. Owing to the extremely small sizes and lifetimes of these systems, we cannot use external probes to study these. Experiments typically detect the particles produced after these collisions. A standard phenomenological model is used to interpret the data from these experiments. A key component of the model uses relativistic hydrodynamics to simulate the evolution of a strongly interacting QGP.

The anisotropies observed in the experiment are usually attributed to the geometric and quantum fluctuations in the initial stages of the collisions. Thermal fluctuations in the QGP phase are another possible source of these fluctuations which have largely been excluded from theoretical studies owing to the technical difficulties in incorporating them. We present a consistent procedure of including these fluctuations in simulations and quantify their effects on experimental observables.