Relativistic heavy-ion collisions constitute a research area focused on studying strongly interacting matter under extreme conditions of temperature and energy density by colliding heavy nuclei (such as Au or Pb) at relativistic energies in accelerators like RHIC and the LHC. The field aims to create and characterize the quark–gluon plasma, probing deconfinement, chiral symmetry restoration, and transport properties of QCD matter. It integrates experimental observables (e.g., flow coefficients, jet quenching, electromagnetic probes, strangeness enhancement) with relativistic hydrodynamics, lattice QCD, and effective theories to constrain the QCD phase diagram and the equation of state relevant to the early universe and compact astrophysical objects.
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