Dynamics of hot bulk QCD matter: From the quark-gluon plasma to hadronic freeze-out

We introduce a combined macroscopic-microscopic transport approach employing relativistic hydrodynamics for the early, dense, deconfined stage of the reaction and a microscopic nonequilibrium model for the later hadronic stage where the equilibrium assumptions are not valid anymore. Within this approach we study the dynamics of hot, bulk QCD matter, which is expected to be created in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions at the Super Proton Synchrotron, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, and the Large Hadron Collider. Our approach is capable of self-consistently calculating the freeze-out of the hadronic system, while accounting for the collective flow on the hadronization hypersurface generated by the QGP expansion. in particular, we perform a detailed analysis of the reaction dynamics, hadronic freeze-out, and transverse flow.