Related papers: critRHIC: The RHIC Low Energy Program
By analyzing the available data on strange hadrons in central Pb+Pb collisions from the NA49 Collaboration at the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) and in central Au+Au collisions from the STAR Collaboration at the Relativistic Heavy-Ion…
The main aim of the beam energy scan (BES) program at the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) is to explore the quantum chromodynamics (QCD) phase diagram. The specific physics goal is to search for the phase boundary and the QCD…
It is generally believed that the quark-hadron transition at small values of baryon chemical potentials $\mu_B$ is a crossover but changes to a first-order phase transition with an associated critical endpoint (CEP) as $\mu_B$ increases.…
In ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions, in the 2 GeV$<p_\perp<$ 6 GeV transverse momentum region, the soft and semi-hard multiple scattering of the incoming nucleons in the nuclear medium results in the broadening of the expected…
We investigate stopping and baryon transport in central relativistic Pb + Pb and Au + Au collisions. At energies reached at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron [sqrt(s_NN) = 6.3-17.3 GeV] and at RHIC (62.4 GeV), we determine the…
I review arguments for the existence of a critical point in the QCD phase diagram as a function of temperature and baryon chemical potential. I describe how heavy ion collision experiments at the SPS and RHIC can discover the tell-tale…
Despite a wealth of experimental data for high-P_T processes in heavy-ion collisions, discriminating between different models of hard parton-medium interactions has been difficult. A key reason is that the pQCD parton spectrum at RHIC is…
One of the primary aims of heavy-ion collisions is to map the QCD phase diagram and search for different phases and phase boundaries. RHIC Energy Scan Program was launched to address this goal by studying heavy-ion collisions at different…
Highlights from Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) and experiments at the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) are presented for the years 2011--2013. This review is a combination of lectures which discussed the latest results each…
In order to fix the parameters for predictions of hard photon and pion production in $Au+Au$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=200$ GeV, proton-proton and proton-nucleus data are analyzed in perturbative QCD in the energy range $\sqrt{s} \approx…
The exploration of the QCD phase diagram particularly the search for a phase transition from hadronic to partonic degrees of freedom and possibly a critical endpoint, is one of the most challenging tasks in present heavy-ion physics. As…
We interpret the scaling of the corrected elliptic flow parameter w.r.t. the corrected multiplicity, observed to hold in heavy ion collisions for a wide variety of energies and system sizes. We use dimensional analysis and power-counting…
We show that with a realistic treatment of spectator momentum distributions the RHIC detector trigger sensitivity is high even when RHIC is run below injection energies. In particular, a problem region with $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$=10 to 60 or 80…
Potential near- and long-term physics opportunities with jets, heavy flavors and electromagnetic probes at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) are presented. Much new physics remains to be unveiled using these probes, due to their…
Density fluctuations near the QCD critical point can be probed via an intermittency analysis in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. We report the first measurement of intermittency in Au$+$Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_\mathrm{_{NN}}}$ = 7.7-200…
The phase diagram of strongly interacting matter can be explored by analyzing data of heavy-ion collisions at different center of mass collision energies. For investigating the space-time structure of the hadron emission source, HBT…
We perform a finite-size scaling analysis of net-proton number cumulants in Au+Au collisions at center-of-mass energies between $\sqrt{s_{\rm{NN}}} = 2.4$ GeV and 54.4 GeV to search for evidence of a critical point in the QCD phase diagram.…
The experimental results on hadron production obtained recently at RHIC offer a new prospective on the energy dependence of the nuclear collision dynamics. In particular, it is possible that parton saturation -- the phenomenon likely…
Two of the most interesting experimental results of heavy-ion reactions at RHIC collider energies are in the hard scattering sector where central Au+Au data show a very different behaviour compared to p+p and peripheral Au+Au collisions.…
Early November 2010, the LHC collided for the first time heavy ions, Pb on Pb, at a centre-of-mass energy of 2.76 TeV/nucleon. This date marked both the end of almost 20 years of preparing for nuclear collisions at the LHC, as well as the…