at extremely high temperature and/or density the normal matter as we know it undergoes a transition to a new phase where confinement is lifted
- the quark gluon plasma. This was realized soon after asymptotic freedom was introduced in 1973. We think this quark-gluon plasma existed in the first few microsedonds after the big bang. to create this state in the laboratory and to study its properties - once it is discovered - collisions of heavy atomic nuclei at as high energies as possible are considered the tool of choice. A fixed target program was carried out until 2000 at the Brookhaven AGS and the CERN SPS which culminated in a press release at CERN in Feb. 2000 stating that the combined evidence of all experiments showed convincingly that a new state of matter had been created, albeit not much of its properties were knows at that time. A few months later the relativistic heavy ion collider at BNl, RHIC, took up operation and the results of the first 3 years of data taking are analysed. These data confirm the observations made at CERN and add important new observables that start to allow characterizing the quark-gluon plasma. Experiments will be introduced and the most important observations will be discussed.
Organiser(s): HR-RFA
Introductory nuclear and particle physics course, standard model of particle physics basic knowledge of statistical mechanics would be useful but is not required
