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This article reviews several important results from RHIC experiments and discusses their implications. They were obtained in a unique environment for studying QCD matter at temperatures and densities that exceed the limits wherein hadrons…
Heavy quarks are produced at the first instant of a nucleus--nucleus collision and therefore are an important tool to study the subsequent high energy-density medium formed in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions. A series of…
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…
While the existence of a strongly interacting state of matter, known as 'quark-gluon plasma' (QGP), has been established in heavy ion collision experiments in the past decade, the task remains to map out the transition from the hadronic…
We show, through analytic arguments, numerical calculations, and comparison with experimental data, that the ratio of the high-p_T observables v_2/(1-R_AA) reaches a well-defined saturation value at high p_T, and that this ratio depends…
A strongly coupled quark-gluon plasma (QGP) of heavy constituent quasiparticles is studied by a path-integral Monte-Carlo method, which improves the corresponding classical simulations by extending them to the quantum regime. It is shown…
Open heavy flavor and quarkonia have long been identified as ideal probes for understanding the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). Heavy quarks are produced in the early stage of the heavy-ion collisions. Therefore they experience the evolution of…
The spectroscopic properties of heavy quarkonia are substantially different in the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) that is created in relativistic heavy-ion collisions as compared to the vacuum situation that can be tested in pp collisions at the…
Experimental results obtained at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) have been interpreted in terms of a strongly interacting quark gluon plasma. The strongly interacting plasma is characterized by ``perfect fluidity'', i.e. a ratio…
This is prepared for a featured article in Nuclear Physics News. Recently, the global polarization of \Lambda and \bar{\Lambda} hyperons in heavy-ion collisions (HIC) has been observed by the STAR Collaboration at the Relativistic Heavy Ion…
Hadrons emitted by the pre-surface layer of quark-gluon plasma (QGP) before phase transition into hadronic gas are considered as possible source of direct information about QGP. It is shown that these hadrons dominate at soft p_t if QGP is…
In non-central relativistic heavy-ion collisions, the produced quark-gluon plasma (QGP) behaves approximately as a rotating fluid due to the system's initial angular momentum. In this rotating fluid, the spins of quarks become polarized due…
Lattice quantum chromodynamics (QCD) predicts a new state of matter, called quark-gluon plasma (QGP), at sufficiently high temperatures or equivalently large energy densities. Relativistic heavy ion collisions are expected to produce such…
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…
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…
Strongly correlated quantum fluids are phases of matter that are intrinsically quantum mechanical, and that do not have a simple description in terms of weakly interacting quasi-particles. Two systems that have recently attracted a great…
Relativistic heavy ion collisions have reached energies that enable the creation of a novel state of matter termed the quark-gluon plasma. Many observables point to a picture of the medium as rapidly equilibrating and expanding as a nearly…
We report on recent research on the properties of elementary particle matter governed by the strong force at high temperatures, where QCD predicts hadrons to dissolve into the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP). After a short introduction to the…
There is now a substantial body of evidence that a deconfined quark-gluon plasma is created in ultrarelativistic collisions of heavy nuclei. Some key observables which are used to gauge the production of the quark-gluon plasma are the…
Strange particles have been a very important observable in the search for a deconfined state of strongly interacting matter, the quark-gluon plasma (QGP), which is expected to be formed in ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions. We review…