Related papers: Brief history of the search for critical structure…
Deconfinement refers to the creation of a state of quasi-free quarks and gluons in strongly interacting matter. Model predictions and experimental evidence for the onset of deconfinement in nucleus-nucleus collisions were discussed in our…
Evidence for the energy threshold of creating the quark-gluon plasma in nucleus-nucleus collisions, the so-called onset of deconfinement, has been found by the energy scan program of the NA49 experiment at the CERN SPS. In this paper we…
The recent results on relativistic heavy-ion collisions are discussed. The most convincing quark-gluon plasma signatures at the LHC and the top RHIC energies are presented. Moreover, the possible methods of evaluating the energy threshold…
Collisions of lead nuclei have been studied at the CERN SPS since 1994. A review is presented of the evidence for the production of deconfined matter, the location of the energy of the onset of deconfinement and the search for the critical…
Many probes are proposed to determine the quark-gluon plasma and explore its properties in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions. Some of them are related to initial states of the collisions, such as collective flow, Hanbury-Brown-Twiss…
I review the status of the search for quark-gluon plasma in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. The available data provide strong evidence for the "three pillars of the Little Bang model": strong radial expansion of the collision fireball…
We expect that the experimental study of percolation cluster formation and appearance of the critical transparency of the strongly interacting matter can give the information about the onset state of deconfinement.
We discuss how the dynamics of the evolving hot fireball of quark--gluon matter impacts phase transition between the deconfined and confined state of matter. The rapid expansion of the fireball of deconfined matter created in heavy ion…
Nuclear collisions at intermediate, relativistic, and ultra-relativistic energies offer unique opportunities to study in detail manifold fragmentation and clustering phenomena in dense nuclear matter. At intermediate energies, the well…
Some of the centrality experiments indicate regime change and saturation in the behavior of characteristics of the secondary particles. It is observed as a critical phenomenon for hadron-nuclear, nuclear-nuclear interactions and…
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…
Two-particle momentum correlations between pairs of identical particles produced in relativistic heavy-ion reactions can be analyzed to extract the space-time structure of the collision fireball. We review recent progress in the application…
I discuss some recent progress in our understanding of high energy nuclear collisions. I will focus on two topics which I was lucky to co-pioneer in the recent past. One is recombination of quarks and its interpretation as a signal for…
In this report, we present an experimental overview of quarkonium results obtained in nucleus-nucleus collisions, with a focus on the data collected at the LHC. We discuss the current understanding of charmonium and bottomonium behavior in…
A new experimental program to study hadron production in collisions of nuclei at the CERN SPS is presented. The program will focus on measurements of fluctuations and long correlations with the aim to identify properties of the onset of…
In the first part, I give a brief description of the quark-gluon plasma search at CERN and of some experimental results. In the second part, I review a dynamical model of nucleus-nucleus interactions and propose a physical interpretation of…
Jet quenching has been one of the most important indicators that ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions produce a deconfined state of quarks and gluons, known as the Quark-Gluon Plasma. While the quenching of jets traditionally refers to…
The NA61/SHINE experiment at the CERN SPS is pursuing a rich programme on strong interactions, covering the study of onset of deconfinement and aims to discover the critical point of strongly interacting matter by performing an energy and…
The QCD critical point is a landmark point on the QCD phase diagram, with potential connections to a plethora of deep questions on the properties of thermal nuclear matter. Future heavy-ion collision experiments, in particular, the second…
The physics of heavy-ion collisions is one of the most exciting and challenging directions of science for the last four decades. On the theoretical side one deals with a non-abelian field theory, while on the experimental side today's…