Related papers: The Search for the Quark-Gluon Plasma
We have extended our earlier simulations of the high temperature behaviour of lattice QCD with two light flavours of staggered quarks on a $16^3 \times 8$ lattice to lower quark mass (m_q=0.00625). The transition from hadronic matter to a…
Non-statistical event-by-event fluctuations in relativistic heavy-ion collisions have been proposed as a probe of the phase transition of hadronic matter to a deconfined phase of quarks and gluons, the so-called Quark-Gluon Plasma. In a…
Recently, the ALICE Collaboration reported an enhancement of the yield ratio of strange and multi-strange hadrons to charged pions as a function of multiplicity at mid-rapidity in proton-proton, proton-lead, lead-lead, and xenon-xenon…
Over the last decade a fruitful interplay has developed between analyses of strongly coupled non-abelian plasmas via the gauge/string duality and the phenomenology of the quark-gluon plasma created in heavy ion collisions. I review the…
Whether Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) exhibits a phase transition at finite temperature and density is an open question. It is important for hydrodynamic modeling of heavy ion collisions and neutron star mergers. Lattice QCD simulations have…
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…
The deconfinement transition region between hadronic matter and quark-gluon plasma is studied for finite volumes. Assuming simple model equations of state and a first order phase transition, we find that fluctuations in finite volumes…
Modelling Quark-Gluon Plasma formation and decay in high energy heavy ion reactions is presented in a framework of a multi-module setup. The collective features, governing the equlibrated fluid dynamical stages of the model are emphasized.…
This lecture presents a concise review of the current status of hard QCD and electromagnetic processes as probes of the quark-gluon plasma.
We confront lattice QCD results on the transition from the hadronic phase to the quark--gluon plasma with hadron resonance gas and percolation models. We argue that for T < T_c the equation of state derived from Monte--Carlo simulations of…
The nuclear liquid-gas transition from a gas of hadrons to a nuclear phase cannot be determined numerically from conventional lattice QCD due to the severe sign problem at large values of the baryon chemical potential. In the strong…
The study of heavy-ion collisions has currently unprecedented opportunities with two first class facilities, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at BNL and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, and five large experiments ALICE,…
Theoretical studies on the early-time dynamics in the ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions are reviewed including pedagogical introductions on the initial condition with small-x gluons treated as a color glass condensate, the bottom-up…
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…
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…
Heavy-ion collision experiments at RHIC and the LHC have found a new emergent phase of QCD, a strongly coupled quark-gluon plasma (sQGP) that is distinctively different from either the low temperature hadron phase or the very high…
A standard picture in cosmology has been emerging over the past decade in which a phase transition, associated with chiral symmetry breaking after the electroweak transition, has occurred at approximately $10^{-6}$ seconds after the Big…
This M.Sc. thesis in Engineering Physics is an overview of the present theory of quark-gluon plasma (QGP) as well as an analysis of the stability criterion for possible stable cosmic QGP objects left over from the quark-hadron transition in…
We present the crossover line between the quark gluon plasma and the hadron gas phases for small real chemical potentials. First we determine the effect of imaginary values of the chemical potential on the transition temperature using…
We review the main results obtained by the BRAHMS collaboration on the properties of hot and dense hadronic and partonic matter produced in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions at RHIC. A particular focus of this paper is to discuss to…