Related papers: INFN What Next: Ultra-relativistic Heavy-Ion Colli…

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…

ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) studies the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP): a deconfined state of matter obtained in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions. One of the probes for QGP study are quarkonia and open heavy flavour, of which…

The heavy ion (HI) program at the LHC has proven to be a successful and indispensable part of the LHC physics program. Its chief aim had been the detailed characterization of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) in lead-lead collisions. Using…

In the last 20 years, heavy-ion collisions have been a unique way to study the hadronic matter in the laboratory. Its phase diagram remains unknown, although many experimental and theoretical studies have been undertaken in the last…

ALICE, A Large Ion Collider Experiment, is the future Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment at CERN devoted to the physics of Quantum Chromo-thermo-dynamics. Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions (HIC) at LHC aim at the production of a plasma…

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…

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) should start its activity of data taking by the end of summer 2009, and will provide beams of p-p and Pb-Pb at colliding energies up to 14 TeV and 5.5 ATeV respectively. The Pb-Pb heavy-ion program aims at…

Potential near- and long-term physics opportunities with jets, heavy flavors and electromagnetic probes at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) are presented. Much new physics remains to be unveiled using these probes, due to their…

The ALICE experiment is devoted to the study of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) created in heavy-ion collisions at the CERN LHC. The experimental setup allows for the study of many different observables that contributed to the characterization…

I present the motivation for studying nuclear collisions at ultrarelativistic energies which is to map the phase diagram of strongly interacting matter under very extreme conditions. The relevant experimental efforts are overviewed and…

Highlights of the results from ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions at CERN-SPS are reviewed. In particular, I discuss how the experimental results indicate that a collective strongly interacting system has been produced, and what are the…

This is a review of the physics prospects for relativistic heavy ion collisions in the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The motivation for the study of superdense matter created in relativistic heavy ion collision is the prospect of observing a…

Lattice quantum chromodynamics (QCD), defined on a discrete space time lattice, leads to a spectacular non-perturbative prediction of a new state of matter, called quark-gluon plasma (QGP), at sufficiently high temperatures or equivalently…

We review the physics of nuclear matter at high energy density and the experimental search for the Quark-Gluon Plasma at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). The data obtained in the first three years of the RHIC physics program…

ALICE is devoted to the study of the properties of the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP). This state of matter is created in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions at the LHC. Heavy quarks are considered effective probes of the QGP since, due to…

The study of high energy nuclear collisions has entered a new stage with RHIC; it therefore seems a good time to ask what we have learned from the experimental results obtained up to now. I recall what we had expected to find when the SPS…

Rich experimental data have been collected in heavy-ion collisions at high energies to study the properties of strongly interacting matter. As the theory of strong interactions, QCD, predicts asymptotic freedom, the created matter at…

This is a contribution for the Proceedings of 5th International Conference on New Frontiers in Physics (ICNFP 2016), held at Crete, 6-14 July 2016. Our goal is to obtain phenomenologically reliable insights for the physics of the…

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…

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…