A critical review of RHIC experimental results
Abstract
The relativistic heavy ion collider (RHIC) was constructed to achieve an asymptotic state of nuclear matter in heavy ion collisions, a near-ideal gas of deconfined quarks and gluons denoted quark-gluon plasma or QGP. RHIC collisions are indeed very different from the hadronic processes observed at the Bevalac and AGS, but high-energy elementary-collision mechanisms are also non-hadronic. The two-component model (TCM) combines measured properties of elementary collisions with the Glauber eikonal model to provide an alternative asymptotic limit for A-A collisions. RHIC data have been interpreted to indicate formation of a {\em strongly-coupled} QGP or "perfect liquid". In this review I consider the experimental evidence that seems to support such conclusions and alternative evidence that may conflict with those conclusions and suggest different interpretations.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1303.4774,
title = {A critical review of RHIC experimental results},
author = {Thomas A. Trainor},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1303.4774},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
30 pages, 37 figures, invited review for Advances in High Energy Physics