Related papers: Critical examination of RHIC paradigms-mostly high…
This presentation discusses some recently active topics in the theoretical interpretation of high energy heavy ion collisions at the LHC and at RHIC. We argue that the standard paradigm for understanding the spacetime evolution of the bulk…
Over the last years, new physics in terms of a novel weakly-interacting massive particle (WIMP) has come more and more under pressure from experimental null results. While the remaining WIMP parameter space will be probed by next generation…
Correlations and fluctuations (the latter are directly related to the 2-particle correlations) is one of the important directions in analysis of heavy ion collisions. At the current stage of RHIC exploration, when the details matter,…
Hard QCD processes in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions become increasingly relevant and they can be used as probes of the dense matter formed during the violent scatterings. We will discuss how one can use these hard probes to study…
The most significant results on hard scattering processes in Au+Au, p+p, and d+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV obtained after 3 years of operation at the BNL Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) are summarized. Hadron production at…
For the past decade, measurements of semi-inclusive single identified particle spectra and two particle correlations in p-p and A+A collisions at RHIC have produced a treasure trove of results which indicate that the medium produced in…
The so called "isobar run" or RHIC was designed to compare a number of observables for collisions of $^{96}_{40}Zr$ with those of $^{96}_{44}Ru$, aimed at identification of $Z$-dependent effects. However, as the STAR data have shown with…
This short paper is an attempt to describe a theorist's view of the goals of relativistic heavy ion program which has just entered the collider era. These goals are centered around understanding the properties and the critical behavior of…
The hot and dense medium created at RHIC, called Quark and Gluon Plasma (QGP) has been a hot topic in the last ten years. Due to the high multiplicities in such heavy-ion collision events, particle correlations using either trigger…
The neighborhood of the QCD chiral critical point is characterized by intense fluctuations of the chiral field which could, in principle, generate pronounced experimental signatures. However, experimental uncertainties which are inherent to…
The physics goals that will be addressed by colliding polarized protons at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) are described. The RHIC spin program provides a new generation of experiments that will unfold the quark, anti-quark and…
The hydrodynamic (hydro) model applied to data from the relativistic heavy ion collider (RHIC) suggests that a dense QCD medium opaque to partons is formed in more-central Au-Au collisions. However, two-component spectrum analysis reveals a…
After almost two decades of investigation, jet quenching has become a fundamental tool to study the properties of the QCD matter produced in high-energy nuclear collisions. Despite the large progress in both experimental and theoretical…
Preliminary results of identical-particle correlations probing the geometric substructure of the particle-emitting source at RHIC are presented. An $m_T$-independent scaling of pion HBT radii from large (central Au+Au) to small (p+p)…
The STAR collaboration at RHIC is measuring the production of electron-positron pairs at small impact parameters, larger than but already close to the range, where the ions interact strongly with each other. We calculate the total cross…
Understanding properties of QCD matter created in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions is a major goal of RHIC and LHC experiments. An excellent tool to study these properties is jet suppression of light and heavy flavor observables.…
The goal of the ultra-relativistic heavy ion program is to study Quantum Chromodynamics under finite temperature and density conditions. After a couple of decades of experiment, the focus at the top RHIC and the LHC energy has evolved to…
I review present challenges that QCD in extreme environments presents to lattice gauge theory. Recent data and impressions from RHIC are emphasized. Physical pictures of heavy ion wavefunctions, collisions and the generation of the Quark…
In this talk I will review my work on the description of high energy scattering in QCD, in particular the fireball observed at RHIC, as well as predictions for the LHC. The aim is to see how much we can learn about actual QCD…
The PHENIX Experiment on the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) with its use of beams of polarized protons, provides a unique environment of hard scattering between gluons and quarks complementary to that provided by deep inelastic…