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.
At Brookhaven National Laboratory's (BNL's) Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), billions of gold ions race through magnets at nearly the speed of light. Thousands of times per second, they collide head-on, breaking into ...
General Physics
Dec 11, 2024
0
69
Collisions between heavy ions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) create quark–gluon plasma, a hot and dense state of matter that is thought to have filled the universe around one millionth of a second after the Big Bang. ...
General Physics
Dec 9, 2024
0
316
At a talk held at CERN this week, the ATLAS collaboration at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) reported observing top quarks in collisions between lead ions, marking the first observation of this process in interactions between ...
General Physics
Nov 15, 2024
0
142
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is like an immensely powerful kitchen, designed to cook up some of the rarest and hottest recipes in the universe, like the quark–gluon plasma, a state of matter known to have existed shortly ...
General Physics
Nov 11, 2024
0
119
Scientists have demonstrated a new way to use high-energy particle smashups at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC)—a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility for nuclear physics research at DOE's ...
General Physics
Nov 6, 2024
0
95
Lab experiments around the globe that are gearing up to recreate the mysterious phase of matter found in the early universe could also produce the world's strongest electromagnetic fields, according to a theoretical analysis ...
General Physics
Sep 27, 2024
0
99
Scientists studying the tracks of particles streaming from six billion collisions of atomic nuclei at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC)—an "atom smasher" that recreates the conditions of the early universe—have discovered ...
General Physics
Aug 21, 2024
3
155
In high-energy physics, researchers have unveiled how high-energy partons lose energy in nucleus-nucleus collisions, an essential process in studying quark-gluon plasma (QGP). This finding could enhance our knowledge of the ...
General Physics
Jul 23, 2024
0
120
Researchers from the HEFTY Topical Collaboration investigated the recombination of charm and bottom quarks into Bc mesons in the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). They have developed a transport model that simulates the kinetics ...
General Physics
Jul 11, 2024
0
101
Colliding heavy atomic nuclei together creates a fluidlike soup of visible matter's fundamental building blocks, quarks and gluons. This soup has very low viscosity—a measure of its "stickiness," or resistance to flow.
General Physics
Jun 25, 2024
0
93
