Related papers: The phase structure of QCD: Fluctuations and Corre…
The exploration of the Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) phase diagram is a central goal of relativistic heavy-ion collision experiments. This review focuses on the role of fluctuations and correlations as sensitive probes of the phase…
Ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions are considered ideal environments for exploring the QCD phase diagram and probing the properties of the QGP as functions of temperature and baryon chemical potential. At the highest energies, such as…
I discuss the phase structure of strongly interacting matter at high temperatures and densities, as predicted by statistical QCD, and consider in particular the nature of the transition of hot hadronic matter to a plasma of deconfined…
A fundamental question of physics is what ultimately happens to matter as it is heated or compressed. In the realm of very high temperature and density the fundamental degrees of freedom of the strong interaction, quarks and gluons, come…
Strongly interacting matter undergoes a crossover phase transition at high temperatures $T\sim 10^{12}$ K and zero net-baryon density. A fundamental question in the theory of strong interactions, Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), is whether a…
The quantum chromodynamics (QCD) phase diagram, which reveals the state of strongly interacting matter at different temperatures and densities, is key to answering open questions in physics, ranging from the behavior of particles in neutron…
This review deals with the structure of hadrons, strongly interacting many-body systems consisting of quarks and gluons. These systems have a size of about 1 fm, which shows up in scattering experiments at low momentum transfers $Q$ in the…
Once upon a time, the world was simple: the proton contained three quarks, two {\it ups} and a {\it down}. How these give the proton its mass and its spin seemed obvious. Over the past forty years the proton has become more complicated, and…
The abundance and size distribution of quark nuggets (QN), formed a few microseconds after the big bang due to first order QCD phase transition in the early universe, has been estimated. It appears that stable QNs could be a viable…
The problem of the structure of nucleons and their interaction in the concept of nonperturbative QCD is discussed as an approach to studying the transformation of current quarks into constituent ones and the search for the mechanism of such…
In nucleus-nucleus collisions at relativistic energies a new kind of matter is created, the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP). The phase diagram of such matter and the chemical freeze-out points will be presented in connection to the pseudo-critical…
Visible matter in the current Universe is a consequence of the phase transition of the strong force, quantum chromodynamics (QCD). This phase transition has occurred at the Universe temperature around $T_c\simeq 165\,$MeV while it was…
We investigate a new mechanism for the cosmological QCD phase transition: inhomogeneous nucleation. The primordial temperature fluctuations, measured to be $\delta T/T \sim 10^{-5}$, are larger than the tiny temperature interval, in which…
I first sketch recent developments concerning the phase diagram of strongly interacting matter as a function of temperature and baryon density, obtained using a model for two-flavor QCD in which the interaction between quarks is modelled on…
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…
Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), the generally accepted theory for the strong interactions, describes the interactions between quarks and gluons. The strongly interacting particles that are seen in nature are hadrons, which are composites of…
Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) is the fundamental theory of strong interactions. It describes the behavior of quarks and gluons which are the smallest known constituents of nuclear matter. The difficulties in solving the theory at low…
We present a review of the studies related to establishing the QCD phase diagram through high energy nucleus-nucleus collisions. We particularly focus on the experimental results related to the formation of a quark-gluon phase, crossover…
Unlike some models whose relevance to Nature is still a big question mark, Quantum Chromodynamics will stay with us forever. Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), born in 1973, is a very rich theory supposed to describe the widest range of strong…
When quarks and gluons are led to form a dense medium, like in high energy or/and heavy-ion collisions, it is interesting to ask the question which are the relevant degrees of freedom that Quantum Chromodynamics predict. The present notes…