Related papers: Heavy quarkonium: progress, puzzles, and opportuni…
A brief survey of the role of heavy flavors as a probe of the state of matter produced by high energy heavy ion collisions is presented. Specific examples include energy loss, initial state gluon saturation, thermalization and flow. The…
After the discovery of the top quark more than 20 years ago, top quark production cross sections have been meticulously studied. The rich variety of results from the LHC experiments are complemented with increasingly accurate theoretical…
In relativistic heavy ion collisions at RHIC and the LHC, a quark gluon plasma (QGP) is created for a short duration of about 10fm/c. Quarkonia (bound states of $c\bar{c}$ and $b\bar{b}$) are sensitive probes of this phase on length scales…
Suppression of open heavy quarks and quarkonia in heavy-ion collisions are among the most informative probes of quark-gluon plasma (QGP). Interpreting the full wealth of data obtained from the collision events requires a precise theoretical…
Dissociation of quarkonium in quark-gluon plasma (QGP) is a long standing topic in relativistic heavy-ion collisions because it has been believed to signal one of the fundamental natures of the QGP -- Debye screening due to the liberation…
Open heavy flavor and quarkonium are unique probes of the hot-dense medium produced in heavy-ion collisions. Their production in p+p collisions also provide important test of QCD. In this paper, we review the selected results on open heavy…
We review the most important experimental results from the first three years of nucleus-nucleus collision studies at RHIC, with emphasis on results from the STAR experiment, and we assess their interpretation and comparison to theory. The…
I present recent results on the theory of QCD matter production in high energy heavy ion collisions and on the interactions of heavy quarks in such environment. The centrality and rapidity dependence of hadron production is evaluated in…
After 15 years of heavy-ion collision experiments at the AGS and SPS, the recent turn-on of RHIC has initiated a new stage of quark-gluon plasma studies. I review the evidence for deconfined quark-gluon matter at SPS energies and the recent…
Relativistic heavy ion physics studies the phenomena that occur when a very large (in units of QCD scale $\Lambda_{\rm QCD}$) amount of energy is deposited into a large (in units of $\Lambda^{-3}_{\rm QCD}$) volume, creating an extended in…
Heavy-ion experiments at the CERN SPS began in the mid-1980s to study nuclear matter at extreme temperatures and densities. The program started with light ions, such as oxygen and sulphur, at energies of 60A GeV and 200A GeV, later…
It has long been expected that the spectrum of hadrons in QCD would be far richer and extensive than experiment has so far revealed. While there have been experimental hints of this richness for some time, it is really only in the last few…
We review weakly-bound heavy quarkonium systems using effective field theories of QCD. We concentrate on potential Non-Relativistic QCD, which provides with a well founded connection between QCD and descriptions of the heavy quarkonium…
We report on recent research on the properties of elementary particle matter governed by the strong force at high temperatures, where QCD predicts hadrons to dissolve into the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP). After a short introduction to the…
The study of formation of heavy quarkonia in relativistic heavy ion collisions provides important insight into the properties of the produced high density QCD medium. Lattice QCD studies show sequential suppression of quarkonia states with…
Heavy-quark production provides a sensitive probe of the gluon structure of nucleons and its modication in nuclei. It is also a key probe of the hot-dense matter created in heavy-ion collisions. We will discuss the physics issues involved,…
The recent observation and measurement of the decay $Z_c(3900) \to \rho \eta_c$ provides the data on the relative strength of the pion and $\rho$ coupling in the corresponding transitions between exotic resonances and pure heavy quarkonium.…
The early production of heavy quarks ($c\bar{c}$ and $b\bar{b}$) makes charmonia an ideal probe to study the evolution of the hot and dense medium produced in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions, known as the quark--gluon plasma (QGP).…
After the discovery of the top quark more than 20 years ago, its properties have been studied in great detail both in production and in decay. Increasingly sophisticated experimental results from the Fermilab Tevatron and from Run 1 and Run…
After a brief survey of the remarkable accomplishments of the current heavy ion collision experiments up to 200A GeV, we address in depth the role of strange particle production in the search for new phases of matter in these collisions. In…