Related papers: QCD Critical Point: The Race is On
Completely unexplored regimes of QCD, dominated by high-density/temperature effects, are available in heavy ion experiments at collider energies. The successful RHIC program shows how relevant the high transverse momentum part of the…
Recent results on the QCD phase diagram are reviewed. We begin with a detailed introduction of lattice techniques. Then results at vanishing chemical potential are presented. The order of the phase transition, the transition temperature and…
We discuss the potential of the experimental programme at NICA to investigate the QCD phase diagram and particularly the position of the critical line at large baryon-chemical potential with accurate measurements of particle multiplicities.…
Initial conditions for relativistic heavy-ion collisions may be far from equilibrium (i.e. there are large initial contributions from the shear stress tensor and bulk pressure) but it is expected that on very short time scales the dynamics…
Heavy-ion collisions provide the only laboratory tests of relativistic quantum field theory at finite temperature. Understanding these is a necessary step in understanding the origins of our universe. These lectures introduce the subject to…
After giving an overview of recently invented methods for simulating lattice QCD at small mu/T, we discuss some results for bulk thermodynamic quantities of QCD matter coming from those methods. We focus on the transition line and the…
For small volume of the quark-gluon plasma formed in heavy ion collisions, the observable near criticality must obey finite-size scaling. According to the finite-size scaling, there exists a fixed point at the critical temperature, where…
With the aim of understanding the phase structure of nuclear matter created in high-energy nuclear collisions at finite baryon density, a beam energy scan program has been carried out at Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). In this…
We summarize our recent results on the phase diagram of QCD with N_f=2+1 quark flavors, as a function of temperature T and quark chemical potential \mu. Using staggered fermions, lattices with temporal extent N_t=4, and the exact RHMC…
Four possible scenarios are considered for a transition from a quark-gluon matter to hadronic matter, and their corresponding correlation signatures are discussed. Four criteria are highlighted for a definitive experimental search for a QCD…
Strongly interacting matter exhibits new phases under extreme conditions. Matter was exposed to such extremes not only in the Early Universe, but also today in the cores of neutron stars, as well as in laboratory experiments at a much…
Quantum Chromo Dynamics (QCD), the theory of strong interactions, predicts a transition of the usual matter to a new phase of matter, called Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP), at sufficiently high temperatures. The non-perturbative technique of…
It has been suggested in the literature that it may be possible to locate the QCD critical end point using the Taylor series of thermodynamic variables about the $\mu=0$ axis. Since the phase transition at the critical end point is believed…
Recent experimental and theoretical developments have motivated interest in a more detailed exploration of heavy ion collisions in the range sqrt(sNN)=5-15 GeV. In contrast to interactions at the full RHIC energy of sqrt(sNN)=200 GeV, such…
The freeze-out curve, which describes a vast amount of precise experimental data in heavy ion collisions, provides a relation between the colliding energy and the thermodynamical parameters of the fireball. The variance, skew and kurtosis…
We introduce a first-order quantum-phase-transition model, which exhibits giant sensitivity $\chi \propto N^2$ at the critical point. Exploiting this effect, we propose a quantum critical detector (QCD) to amplify weak input signals. The…
I review arguments for the existence of a critical point E in the QCD phase diagram as a function of temperature T and baryon chemical potential \mu. I describe how heavy ion collision experiments at the SPS and RHIC can discover the…
The event-by-event fluctuations in heavy ion collisions carry information about the thermodynamic properties of the hadronic system at the time of freeze-out. By studying these fluctuations as a function of varying control parameters, such…
Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) is a firmly established part of the Standard Model, yet its long distance properties remain challenging at a conceptual level. In recent years significant experimental and theoretical progress has been made…
We review the basic concepts of perturbative quantum chromodynamics (QCD) and relativistic hydrodynamics, and their applications to hadron production in high energy nuclear collisions. We discuss results from the Relativistic Heavy Ion…