Related papers: The Next Decade of Physics with PHENIX
This article summarizes our present knowledge about nuclear matter at the highest energy densities and its formation in relativistic heavy ion collisions. We review what is known about the structure and properties of the quark-gluon plasma…
In this talk, I focus on the quark-gluon structure of hadrons probed using high-energy hadron beams. I start with a brief review on recent major achievements in measuring parton distributions of the nucleon, pion, and kaon, with hadron…
Almost exactly 3 decades ago, in the fall of 1986, the era of experimental ultra-relativistic (\emph{E/m $\gg 1$}) heavy ion physics started simultaneously at the SPS at CERN and the AGS at Brookhaven with first beams of light Oxygen ions…
We present a written version of four lectures given at the NATO Advanced Study Institute on "CD Perspectives on Hot and Dense Matter"in Cargese, Corsica during August, 2001. Over the last year the first exciting results from the…
Nonequilibrium models (three-fluid hydrodynamics, UrQMD, and quark molecular dynamics) are used to discuss the uniqueness of often proposed experimental signatures for quark matter formation in relativistic heavy ion collisions from the SPS…
Hot QCD physics studies the nuclear strong force under extreme temperature and densities. Experimentally these conditions are achieved via high-energy collisions of heavy ions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and the Large…
Statistical calculations within the Standard Model indicate that at extremely high densities the quarks and gluons will become deconfined, leading to a new state of matter, the so-called Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP). Recently it was announced…
In the last few years, numerical simulations of QCD on the lattice have reached a new level of accuracy. A wide range of thermodynamic quantities is now available in the continuum limit and for physical quark masses. This allows a…
In central collisions at relativistic heavy ion colliders like the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider RHIC/Brookhaven and the Large Hadron Collider LHC (in its heavy ion mode) at CERN/Geneva, one aims at detecting a new form of hadronic matter…
We provide an overview of the present understanding of the transition from hadrons to a quark-gluon plasma, its signatures, and the experimental results so far. We discuss results of numerical simulations of the lattice gauge theory and…
Results from the PHENIX experiment for the first RHIC run with Au-Au collisions at a nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of 130 GeV are presented. The systematic variation with centrality of charged particle multiplicity, transverse…
Recent highlights from Brookhaven National Laboratory and the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) are reviewed and discussed in the context of the discovery of the strongly interacting Quark Gluon Plasma (sQGP) at RHIC in 2005 as…
Central nuclear collisions at energies far above 1 GeV/nucleon may provide for conditions, where the transition from highly excited hadronic matter into quark matter or quark-gluon plasma can be probed. Here I review our current…
At the Brookhaven National Laboratory, experimental efforts with heavy-ion accelerators started at the AGS synchrotron in 1984 and then at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) in 1991. This chapter of a future book describes how…
The exploration of the strong-interaction matter under extreme conditions is one of the main goals of relativistic heavy-ion collisions. We provide some of the main results on the novel properties of quark-gluon plasma, with particular…
At the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), key insights into the bulk properties of the hot and dense partonic matter arise from the study of azimuthal anisotropy ($v_2$) of the produced particles. These insights include indicating the…
I review progress toward the experimental study of polarized proton collisions at RHIC, at center-of-mass energies of several hundred GeV. The tools under development for these experiments are summarized, with emphasis on the…
The heavy-ion programme at the CERN SPS, which started back in '86, has produced a wealth of very interesting and intriguing results in the quest for the quark-gluon plasma. The highlights of the programme on dilepton and direct photon…
Hadron collisions at the LHC offer a unique opportunity to study strong interactions. The exciting data collected by the four RHIC experiments suggest that in heavy-ion collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV, an equilibrated, strongly-coupled…
Some physical aspects of the ALICE experiment at the LHC are considered with emphasis on possible probes of quark-gluon plasma, created in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions.