Related papers: Melting Hadrons, Boiling Quarks
I retrace the developments from Hagedorn's concept of a limiting temperature for hadronic matter to the discovery and characterization of the quark-gluon plasma as a new state of matter. My recollections begin with the transformation more…
Strangeness signature of of quark-gluon plasma (QGP) is central to the exploration of baryon-dense matter: the search for the critical point and onset of deconfinement. I report on the discovery of QGP by means of strangeness: The key…
We look from a theoretical perspective at the new phase of matter, quark-gluon plasma (QGP), the new form of nuclear matter created at high temperature and pressure. Here I retrace the path to QGP discovery and its exploration in terms of…
We demonstrate that both quark-gluon plasma (QGP) and hadronic gas (HG) models of the central fireball created in S -> W collisions at 200 GeV A are possible sources of the recently observed strange (anti-) baryons. From the theoretical…
I review the foundational motivation which led us to the ultra relativistic heavy ion collision research at SPS, RHIC and now LHC: the quantum vacuum structure; the deconfined nature of quark-gluon plasma (QGP) phase filling the Universe…
We identify the major physics milestones in the development of strange hadrons as an observable for both the formation of quark-gluon plasma, and of the ensuing explosive disintegration of deconfined matter fireball formed in relativistic…
Lattice QCD results reveal that the critical parameters and the order of the quark-hadron phase transition are quite sensitive to the number of dynamical flavours and their masses included in the theory. Motivated by this result we develop…
In a Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP), the fundamental building blocks of matter, quarks and gluons, are under extreme conditions of temperature and density. A QGP could exist in the early stages of the Universe, and in various objects and events…
We describe the quark gluon plasma (QGP) as a thermalized quark-gluon system, the thermalized QGP phase of QCD. The hadronization of the thermalized QGP phase is given in a way resembling a coalescence model with correlated quarks and…
High-energy heavy-ion collisions provide a unique opportunity to study the properties of the hot and dense strongly-interacting system composed of deconfined quarks and gluons -- the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) -- in laboratory conditions. The…
This is a critical review of the various observables that have been proposed to signal the change from dense hadronic matter to a quark-gluon plasma at high temperature or baryon density. I discuss current models of quark-gluon plasma…
The properties of bound states are fundamental to hadronic spectroscopy and play a central role in the transition from hadronic matter to a quark-gluon plasma (QGP). In a strongly coupled QGP (sQGP), the interplay of temperature, binding…
Is the new state of matter formed in relativistic heavy ion collisions the deconfined quark--gluon plasma? We survey the status of several strange hadron observables and discuss how these measurement help understand the dense hadronic…
It is believed that a novel state of matter - Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP) will be transiently produced if normal hadronic matter is subjected to sufficiently high temperature and/or density. We have investigated the possibility of QGP…
At high temperatures and densities the nuclear matter undergoes a phase transition to a new state of matter called quark gluon plasma (QGP). This new state of matter which existed in the universe after a few microsecond of the big bang can…
Heavy-ion collisions at very high colliding energies are expected to produce a quark-gluon plasma (QGP) at the highest temperature obtainable in a laboratory setting. Experimental studies of these reactions can provide an unprecedented…
The production of strange particles in a hot medium as produced in collisions of heavy ions is considered one of the most important signals for the phase transition to a quark-gluon plasma. In the first part of this lecture, the theoretical…
This is an introduction to the study of strongly interacting matter. We survey its different possible states and discuss the transition from hadronic matter to a plasma of deconfined quarks and gluons. Following this, we summarize the…
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…
In nucleus-nucleus collisions at relativistic energies a new kind of matter is created, the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP). The phase diagram of such matter and the chemical freeze-out points will be presented in connection to the pseudo-critical…