Related papers: Does the QGP fire ball really exist?
Major aspects of the subhadronic state of nuclear matter populated with deconfined color particles are reviewed. At high and even at rather low nuclear collision energies, this is expected to be a short-term quark-gluon plasma (QGP), but,…
The ultimate aim of high energy heavy ion collisions is to study quark deconfinement and the quark-gluon plasma predicted by quantum chromodynamics. This requires the identification of observables calculable in QCD and measurable in heavy…
I use simple thermodynamic reasoning to argue that at temperatures of order a trillion kelvin, QCD, the theory which describes strongly interacting particles such as protons and neutrons under normal conditions, undergoes a phase transition…
I retrace the developments from Hagedorn's concept of a limiting temperature for hadronic matter to the discovery and characterization of the quark-gluon plasma as a new state of matter. My recollections begin with the transformation more…
In statistical QCD, the thermal properties of the quark-gluon plasma can be determined by studying the in-medium behaviour of heavy quark bound states. The results can be applied to quarkonium production in high energy nuclear collisions,…
At high temperatures, strongly interacting matter becomes a plasma of deconfined quarks and gluons. In statistical QCD, deconfinement and the properties of the resulting quark-gluon plasma can be investigated by studying the in-medium…
In this thesis the finite temperature transition between confined and deconfined matter is studied at zero and nonzero quark densities. The findings are relevant for the understanding of the evolution of the early Universe and contemporary…
Our current knowledge of the quark-gluon plasma in thermodynamical equilibrium is reviewed. The phase diagram of strongly interacting matter is discussed, with emphasis on the quark-hadron phase transition and the color-superconducting…
The heavy quark drag and momentum diffusion have been investigated in a hot magnetized quark-gluon plasma, along the directions parallel and perpendicular to the magnetic field. The analysis is done within the framework of Fokker-Planck…
We study as function of the collision energy and stopping the thermal conditions reached in a quark-gluon plasma fireball formed in a relativistic heavy ion collision. We explore strange particle yields for the current round of Pb-Pb and…
In the context of the Hagedorn temperature half-centenary I describe our understanding of the hot phases of hadronic matter both below and above the Hagedorn temperature. The first part of the review addresses many frequently posed…
Rotation affects the transition temperature between confined (hadronic) and deconfined (quark-gluon plasma) phases of the strongly interacting matter produced in non-central heavy ion collisions. A holographic description of this effect was…
I discuss finite-temperature gauge theories as a framework to describe the quark-gluon plasma in the regime of high temperature where the gauge coupling is small, $g << 1$. I review recent progress in the understanding of the long-range…
We discuss how the dynamics of an exploding hot fireball of quark--gluon matter impacts the actual phase transition conditions between the deconfined and confined state of matter. We survey the chemical conditions prevailing at…
The fireball created in an ultrarelativistic heavy ion collision is the environment in which all processes providing clues about the possible formation of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) happen. It is therefore crucial to understand the…
The quark-gluon plasma (QGP) excitations, corresponding to the scalar and pseudoscalar meson quantum numbers, for different temperatures are calculated. Analysis is performed in the Hard Thermal Loop (HTL) Approximation and leads to a…
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…
I review the three broad areas where major progress has been reported: The phase structure of strongly interacting matter, the properties of matter at the instant when it freezes out into individual hadrons in the final stage of the…
The past fifty years have seen the emergence of a new field of research in physics, the study of matter at extreme temperatures and densities. The theory of strong interactions, quantum chromodynamics (QCD), predicts that in this limit,…
In these lectures, I will attempt a pedagogical and qualitative introduction to the theory of equilibrium and thermalization of quark-gluon plasmas. I assume only that the reader is familiar with quantum field theory at zero temperature and…