Jaki Noronha-Hostler

Biography

Dr. Jacquelyn Noronha-Hostler finished her PhD in Theoretical Physics at the Goethe University in Frankfurt in 2010, during this time she was also a visiting student at Columbia University from 2008-2009 and she received funding from FIAS, GRADED, and the ITP in Frankfurt. For her undergraduate degree she graduated Magma cum Laude from Berea College with a double major in Physics and Mathematics with a minor in German for which she was awarded the Waldemar Noll Scholarship in Physics, the Senior Mathematics Award, and travel funds from the DAAD, NSF, and the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship. Following her Phd, she obtained a FAPESP postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Sao Paulo, followed by an Associate Research position at Columbia University, and a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Houston. From 2017-2019 she was an Assistant Professor in the Physics and Astronomy Department at Rutgers University where she received the 2018 Alfred P Sloan Fellowship and the 2018 Department of Energy Early Career Award. In 2019 she joined the faculty at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign as an Assistant Professor. She is currently on the executive committee for the American Physical Society's Division of Nuclear Physics and is a member of the BEST collaboration. She recently finished a 4 year term on the RHIC & AGS User's Executive Committee

Pronouns: she/her

Research Interests

• Nuclear theory: Relativistic heavy-ion collisions, relativistic fluids (viscous), Lattice Quantum Chromodynamics, Phase Transitions, Hadronic Interactions, Computational Physics

Undergraduate Research Opportunities

Currently seeking undergraduates who would be interested in computational physics projects (group is currently full but please check back later!)

Research Statement

 

My research focuses on extracting the fundamental properties of the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP), the phase of strongly interacting matter that existed microseconds after the Big Bang. To recreate the QGP in the laboratory heavy nuclei are smashed together at nearly the speed of light to reach extremely high temperatures. At this point, quarks and gluons are no longer bound together in hadrons but create a strongly interacting, dense quark gluon “soup” that flows like a nearly frictionless liquid. Here, a frictionless liquid implies that the shear viscosity (friction between shear layers) over entropy density, η/s, is an order of magnitude smaller than the one found in water.

In order to investigate the theory of strong interactions, Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), in its strongly interacting regime, Lattice QCD is used. This is a numerical method in which quarks and gluons are placed on a discretized four-dimensional grid. The quarks sit on the lattice sites, while the gluons are the links between them. Lattice QCD has been enormously successful in computing the thermodynamic properties of the QGP at zero baryon density. Lattice calculations predict a crossover phase transition between the hadron gas phase and the QGP.  Current Lattice QCD calculations have two limitations: dynamical (real time) calculations and large baryon densities, which are the primary focus of my research. 

The QGP created in the laboratory is the hottest, smallest, and densest fluid known to mankind so a well-established dynamical description is necessary to interpret experimental results. Effective models such as relativistic viscous hydrodynamics use the Lattice QCD Equation of State to serve as a bridge between first principle calculations and experimental observables that describe the collective motion of the QGP. 

 

 

 

Graduate Research Opportunities

Currently seeking graduate students on a wide range of topics in nuclear theory

Research Honors

• DOE Early Career Award (9/15/18)
• Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (9/15/18)

Selected Articles in Journals

• J. Noronha-Hostler, J. Noronha and C. Greiner, Transport Coefficients of Hadronic Matter near T(c), Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 172302 (2009)
• J. Noronha-Hostler, G. S. Denicol, J. Noronha, R. P. G. Andrade and F. Grassi, Bulk Viscosity Effects in Event-by-Event Relativistic Hydrodynamics, Phys. Rev. C 88, 044916 (2013)
• J. Noronha-Hostler, J. Noronha and F. Grassi, Bulk viscosity-driven suppression of shear viscosity effects on the flow harmonics at RHIC, Phys. Rev. C 90, 034907 (2014).
• J. Noronha-Hostler, L. Yan, F. G. Gardim and J. Y. Ollitrault, Linear and cubic response to the initial eccentricity in heavy-ion collisions, Phys. Rev. C 93, no. 1, 014909 (2016).
• J. Noronha-Hostler, B. Betz, J. Noronha and M. Gyulassy, Event-by-event hydrodynamics + jet energy loss: A solution to the RAA — v2 puzzle,  Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, no. 25, 252301 (2016)
• Paolo Alba, Rene Bellwied, Szabolcs Borsanyi, Zoltan Fodor, Jana Guenther, Sandor D. Katz, Valentina Mantovani Sarti, Jacquelyn Noronha-Hostler, Paolo Parotto, Attila Pasztor Israel Portillo Vazquez, Claudia Ratti, Constraining the hadronic spectrum through QCD thermodynamics on the lattice, Phys. Rev. D 96, no. 3, 034517 (2017).
• R. Critelli, J. Noronha, J. Noronha-Hostler, I. Portillo, C. Ratti and R. Rougemont, Critical point in the phase diagram of primordial quark-gluon matter from black hole physics, Phys. Rev. D 96, no. 9, 096026 (2017).
• G. Giacalone, J. Noronha-Hostler, M. Luzum and J. Y. Ollitrault, Hydrodynamic predictions for 5.44 TeV Xe+Xe collisions, Phys. Rev. C 97, no. 3, 034904 (2018).
• C. Ratti, R. Bellwied, J. Noronha-Hostler, P. Parotto, I. Portillo Vazquez and J. M. Stafford, Freeze-out temperature from net-Kaon fluctuations at RHIC,  Phys. Rev. C 99, 034912 (2019)
• M. D. Sievert and J. Noronha-Hostler, CERN Large Hadron Collider system size scan predictions for PbPb, XeXe, ArAr, and OO with relativistic hydrodynamics, Phys. Rev. C 100, no. 2, 024904 (2019).
• Paolo Parotto, Marcus Bluhm, Debora Mroczek, Marlene Nahrgang, Jacquelyn Noronha-Hostler, Krishna Rajagopal, Claudia Ratti, Thomas Schaefer, Mikhail Stephanov, QCD equation of state matched to lattice data and exhibiting a critical point singularity, Phys. Rev. C 101, no. 3, 034901 (2020).