Related papers: Quarks in the universe
The ultimate aim of high energy heavy ion collisions is to study quark deconfinement and the quark-gluon plasma predicted by quantum chromodynamics. This requires the identification of observables calculable in QCD and measurable in heavy…
We present the historical antecedents to the field of relativistic heavy ion physics, beginning with early attempts to model the strong interaction and ending with the endorsement of a relativistic heavy ion collider in the 1983 U.S.…
The fireball created in an ultrarelativistic heavy ion collision is the environment in which all processes providing clues about the possible formation of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) happen. It is therefore crucial to understand the…
Atomic nuclei are the core of everything we can see. At the first level of approximation, their atomic weights are simply the sum of the masses of all the nucleons they contain. Each nucleon has a mass $m_N \approx 1\,$GeV, i.e.…
A revolution in elementary particle physics occurred during the period from the ICHEP1968 to the ICHEP1982 with the advent of the parton model from discoveries in Deeply Inelastic electron-proton Scattering at SLAC, neutrino experiments,…
Nuclei make up the majority of the visible matter in the Universe; obtaining a first principles description of the nuclear properties and interactions between nuclei directly from the underlying theory of the strong interaction, Quantum…
During the past two decades, cosmologists turned to particle physics in order to explore the physics of the very early Universe. The main link between the physics of the smallest and largest structures in the Universe is the idea of…
Transport equations have been applied successfully to describe the quarkonium evolution inside the quark-gluon plasma, which include both plasma screening effects and recombination. We demonstrate how the quarkonium transport equation is…
Quantum field theory at finite temperature and density can be used for describing the physics of relativistic plasmas. Such systems are frequently encountered in astrophysical situations, such as the early Universe, Supernova explosions,…
Heavy ion collisions at RHIC and at the LHC can create the quark-gluon plasma, a state of matter at very high temperatures. Among a plethora of particles that are produced in these collisions, also light is emitted throughout the evolution…
A (nearly) perfect liquid discovered in the experements with ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions is investigated by studying the quark ensembles with four-fermion interection as a fundamental theoretical approach. The comparative…
When quarks and gluons are led to form a dense medium, like in high energy or/and heavy-ion collisions, it is interesting to ask the question which are the relevant degrees of freedom that Quantum Chromodynamics predict. The present notes…
We give a pedagogical introduction (suitable to upper level physics undergraduates) to the field of ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions. We pay particular attention to our understanding of the thermodynamic and hydrodynamic properties of…
Imposing an equilibrium between the thermal pressure of deconfined quarks and gluons and the dynamical compression pressure exercised by in-flowing nuclear matter, we study the initial thermal conditions reached in a quark-gluon plasma…
In heavy-ion collisions the electromagnetic field exists before the hot nuclear matter emergence. Requiring the field continuity we compute it in the central rapidity region by taking into account the electromagnetic response of the Quark…
A set of coupled kinetic equations describing in the Abelian approximation a mixture of quarks and self-interacting gluons is formulated and solved numerically. The model includes the Schwinger-like mechanism for particle creation in a…
The vacuum is now understood to possess a rich and complex structure, characterized by fluctuating energy fields and a condensate of virtual quark-antiquark pairs. The spontaneous breaking of the approximate chiral symmetry, signaled by the…
At high temperatures, strongly interacting matter becomes a plasma of deconfined quarks and gluons. In statistical QCD, deconfinement and the properties of the resulting quark-gluon plasma can be investigated by studying the in-medium…
This article reviews several important results from RHIC experiments and discusses their implications. They were obtained in a unique environment for studying QCD matter at temperatures and densities that exceed the limits wherein hadrons…
The relic abundance of heavy stable particles charged under a confining gauge group can be depleted by a second stage of annihilations near the deconfinement temperature. This proceeds via the formation of quarkonia-like states, in which…