Related papers: The soup that is not too hot
A remarkable progress has been made in the understanding of the hot and dense QCD matter using lattice gauge theory. The issues which are very well understood as well those which require both conceptual as well as algorithmic advances are…
Strongly interacting matter exhibits new phases under extreme conditions. Matter was exposed to such extremes not only in the Early Universe, but also today in the cores of neutron stars, as well as in laboratory experiments at a much…
The status of lattice QCD investigations at high temperature is reviewed. After a short introduction into thermal QCD on the lattice we report on the present understanding of the phase diagram and the equation of state, in particular in…
Quarks of other flavours than up and down, i.e. $s$, $c$, and $b$ quarks, have been long recognized as effective probes of the structure of hot QCD matter. In this talk, I review some of the motivations for their investigation and discuss…
Neutron stars contain matter in one of the densest forms found in the Universe. This feature, together with the unprecedented progress in observational astrophysics, makes such stars superb astrophysical laboratories for a broad range of…
Quarks of heavy flavors are useful tool to study quark-gluon plasma created in heavy-ion collisions. Due to their high mass and early production time, heavy quarks experience the entire evolution of the system created in these collisions.…
Nuclear matter under astrophysical conditions is explored with time-dependent and static Hartree-Fock calculations. The focus is in a regime of densities where matter segregates into liquid and gaseous phases unfolding a rich scenario of…
We develop a phenomenological statistical model for dilute star matter at finite temperature, in which free nucleons are treated within a mean-field approximation and nuclei are considered to form a loosely interacting cluster gas. Its…
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 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…
The RHIC Beam Energy Scan focuses on the study of the QCD phase diagram --- temperature ($T$) vs. baryon chemical potential ($\mu_B$). The aim is to verify some predictions from QCD: that a cross-over occurs at $\mu_B$ = 0, that there…
Heavy-ion collision experiments offer a unique opportunity to explore the early stages of the Universe by creating matter under extreme conditions of high temperature and baryon density. The properties of such matter are governed by the…
The equation of state of QCD at finite temperatures and baryon densities has a wide range of applications in many fields of modern particle and nuclear physics. It is the main ingredient to describe the dynamics of experimental heavy ion…
Important progress in understanding the behavior of hadronic matter at high density has been achieved recently, by adapting the techniques of condensed matter theory. At asymptotic densities, the combination of asymptotic freedom and BCS…
It is generally agreed on that the tremendous densities reached in the centers of neutron stars provide a high-pressure environment in which several intriguing particles processes may compete with each other. These range from the generation…
One of the most promising possibilities may be the appearance of quark matter in astrophysical phenomena in the light of recent progress in observations. The mechanism of deconfinement is not well understood, but the thermodynamical aspects…
I review recent developments in finite temperature lattice QCD which are useful for the study of heavy-ion collisions. I pay particular attention to studies of the equation of state and the light they throw on conformal symmetry and the…
Hard probes are indispensable tools to study the hot and dense quark-gluon matter created in ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions. These probes are created in the collision itself with a small cross section, and they serve as indicators…
The Large Hadron Collider at CERN will open a new energy domain for heavy-ion physics. Besides ALICE, the dedicated heavy-ion experiment, also ATLAS and CMS are preparing rich physics programs with nucleus-nucleus collisions. Here we focus…
We discuss medium effects on light cluster production in the QCD phase diagram by relating Mott transition lines to those for chemical freeze-out. In heavy-ion collisions at highest energies provided by the LHC, light cluster abundances…