Dynamics of strongly interacting parton-hadron matter

Abstract: In this study we investigate the dynamics of strongly interacting parton-hadron matter by calculating the centrality dependence of direct photons produced in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200$ GeV within the Parton-Hadron-String Dynamics (PHSD) transport approach. As sources for 'direct' photons, we incorporate the interactions of quarks and gluons as well as hadronic interactions ($\pi+\pi\to\rho+\gamma$, $\rho+\pi\to\pi+\gamma$, meson-meson bremsstrahlung $m+m\to m+m+\gamma$, meson-baryon bremsstrahlung $m+B\to m+B+\gamma$), the decays of $\phi$ and $a_1$ mesons and the photons produced in the initial hard collisions ('pQCD'). Our calculations suggest that the channel decomposition of the observed spectrum changes with centrality with an increasing (dominant) contribution of hadronic sources for more peripheral reactions. Furthermore, the 'thermal' photon yield is found to scale roughly with the number of participant nucleons as $N_{part}^\alpha$ with $\alpha \approx$ 1.5, whereas the partonic contribution scales with an exponent $\alpha_p \approx1.75$. Additionally, we provide predictions for the centrality dependence of the direct photon elliptic flow $v_2(p_T)$. The direct photon $v_2$ is seen to be larger in peripheral collisions compared to the most central ones since the photons from the hot deconfined matter in the early stages of the collision carry a much smaller elliptic flow than those from the final hadronic interactions.