Viscous hydrodynamics for strongly anisotropic expansion

Abstract: A new formulation of second-order viscous hydrodynamics, based on an expansion around a locally anisotropic momentum distribution, is presented. It generalizes the previously developed formalism of anisotropic hydrodynamics (aHydro) to include a complete set of dissipative currents for which equations of motion are derived by solving the Boltzmann equation in the 14-moment approximation. By solving the vaHydro equations for a transversally homogeneous, longitudinally boost-invariant system ((0+1)-dimensional expansion) and comparing with the exact solution of the Boltzmann equation in relaxation-time approximation we show that vaHydro performs much better than all other known second-order viscous hydrodynamic approximations.