Related papers: Ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions: the first …
We present the historical antecedents to the field of relativistic heavy ion physics, beginning with early attempts to model the strong interaction and ending with the endorsement of a relativistic heavy ion collider in the 1983 U.S.…
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…
Strongly interacting matter as described by the thermodynamics of QCD undergoes a phase transition, from a low temperature hadronic medium to a high temperature quark-gluon plasma state. In the early universe this transition occurred during…
One of the fundamental questions in the field of subatomic physics is what happens to matter at extreme densities and temperatures as may have existed in the first microseconds after the Big Bang and exists, perhaps, in the core of dense…
The first collisions of lead nuclei, delivered by the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the end of 2010, at a centre-of-mass energy per nucleon pair $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 2.76 TeV, marked the beginning of a new era in ultra-relativistic…
The first collisions of lead nuclei, delivered by the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the end of 2010, at a centre-of-mass energy per nucleon pair $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 2.76 TeV, marked the beginning of a new era in ultra-relativistic…
The past fifty years have seen the emergence of a new field of research in physics, the study of matter at extreme temperatures and densities. The theory of strong interactions, quantum chromodynamics (QCD), predicts that in this limit,…
We discuss a number of prominent theoretical challenges in the physics of ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions, and review some recent attempts to tackle them. These examples cover most stages of the collision process, but emphasis is…
We analyze the possibilities for studying properties of dense QCD-matter, created in ultrarelativistic nuclear collisions, by hard QCD-production processes, so-called "hard" probes -- heavy quarkonia, hard jets, high mass dimuons. Special…
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…
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…
After decades of painstaking research, the field of heavy ion physics has reached an exciting new era. Evidence is mounting that we can create a high temperature, high density, strongly interacting ``bulk matter'' state in the laboratory --…
The medium-modifications of processes characterized by the presence of a hard scale provide the most diverse tools to characterize the properties of the matter created in high-energy nuclear collisions. Indeed, jet quenching, 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…
We review some basic concepts of Relativistic Heavy Ion Physics and discuss our understanding of some key results from the experimental program at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). We focus in particular on the early time dynamics…
The aim of ultrarelativistic heavy ion physics is to study collectivity and thermodynamics of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) by creating a transient small volume of matter with extreme density and temperature. There is experimental evidence…
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…
Ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions at the laboratory provide a unique chance to study quantum chromodynamics (QCD) under extreme temperature (${\approx}150\,\mathrm{MeV}$) and density (${\approx}1\,\mathrm{GeV}/\mathrm{fm}^3$)…
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…
Collisions of heavy ions (nuclei) at ultra-relativistic energies (sqrt(s_NN) >> 10 GeV per nucleon-nucleon collision in the centre of mass system) are regarded as a unique tool to produce in the laboratory a high energy density and high…